You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.
—Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:22
The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. 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.
— From HUMANITY ON THE BRINK: A Forced March Into the Abyss, or Forging a Way Forward Out of the Madness? By Bob Avakian
Break ALL the Chains!
Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution
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Even with all the ways that the heavy chains of hundreds, and thousands, of years of oppressive tradition weigh down on the masses of people—and place a heavy burden particularly on the half of humanity that is female—there is a deep yearning to be free of all this, which not only leads to imaginary hopes of supernatural salvation but also erupts in unrestrained fury right in this real world. And that fury needs to be fully called forth, given a scientific, revolutionary expression—focused toward the emancipation of all the oppressed and exploited of the world, and ultimately all humanity—directed to fighting against the fundamental source of all the suffering: this system of capitalism-imperialism, with its suffocating and brutal, patriarchal male supremacy, along with all its other outrages. This takes on even more powerful meaning and urgent importance in the current situation in this country (and others), where the forceful assertion of raw misogyny (hatred of women) and patriarchal subjugation of women is becoming more blatant and unbridled, focused to a significant degree now in the escalating moves to even further deny women control over their own lives and their very bodies, with the right to abortion, and even birth control, being brought under mounting attack. Right now, this slogan and call needs to be taken up broadly and made a powerful material force: Break the Chains, Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!
From SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING by Bob Avakian
Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world. And in addition to all the other outrages which I have referred to, in terms of children throughout the slums and shantytowns of the Third World, in addition to all the horrors that will be heaped on them — the actual living in garbage and human waste in the hundreds of millions as their fate, laid out before them, yes, even before they are born —there is, on top of this, for those children who are born female, the horror of everything that this will bring simply because they are female in a world of male domination. And this is true not only in the Third World. In “modern” countries like the U.S. as well, the statistics barely capture it: the millions who will be raped; the millions more who will be routinely demeaned, deceived, degraded, and all too often brutalized by those who are supposed to be their most intimate lovers; the way in which so many women will be shamed, hounded and harassed if they seek to exercise reproductive rights through abortion, or even birth control; the many who will be forced into prostitution and pornography; and all those who —if they do not have that particular fate, and even if they achieve some success in this “new world” where supposedly there are no barriers for women — will be surrounded on every side, and insulted at every moment, by a society and a culture which degrades women, on the streets, in the schools and workplaces, in the home, on a daily basis and in countless ways.
—Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:10
From WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM:
Eliminating Discrimination, Inequality, and Oppression in Every Form
In the new socialist society, eliminating all the oppressive divisions that characterized the old society—including oppression based on nationality and race, sex and gender—will be a fundamental goal and of the highest priority. Special attention and resources will be devoted to overcoming the terrible legacy of slavery and genocide, and the continual discrimination and brutal degradation, to which Black people, Native Americans, Latinos and other people of color have been subjected throughout the history of the USA. Immigrants, from all parts of the world, who have a sincere desire to contribute to goals of the new socialist republic will be welcome in this republic. The rights of LGBT people and of women, including the fundamental rights to abortion and birth control, are guaranteed in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America and will be protected and enforced by the government of that new socialist republic. As emphasized in this Constitution, the oppression of women arose together with, and for thousands of years has been woven together with, relations among human beings based on exploitation, and this is a defining feature of the capitalist-imperialist USA. Abolishing and uprooting all this will be one of the most important objectives of the new revolutionary society based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
New York City, October 8, 2022 Photo: revcom.us