 Wellread Books is proud to announce the release of an important new title, The Revolutionary Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa Luxemburg has often been misrepresented as an opponent of the October Revolution, standing for some sort of softer, anti-authoritarian Marxism as against that of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In this book, Marie Fredrickson sets the record straight. Examining her ideas on the basis of what she actually wrote, the book reclaims Rosa Luxemburg as the revolutionary she was. You can order the book now from our website WellreadBooks.net for only £12.99 and you can get free shipping till the end of March with the code Rosa1871. To introduce myself, I'm Lubna Bardi, I'm a member of Socialist Appeal and today we have Tash here who will be discussing this important question of the historic examples of the women's struggle mainly focused on the Russian Revolution. Hi Tash, welcome, maybe you can introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, I'm Natasha, I'm an activist in Socialist Appeal and I'm also a member of the National Education Union and I'm an activist there as well. Great, so we'll be discussing, as mentioned, the historical lessons of the women's struggle and mainly of course on the Russian Revolution with a focus on that. Now, I guess it will be good to just like first lay out to our listeners what exactly were the conditions of women in Russia? How come that they were basically enforced in the revolution? Maybe, yeah, maybe you can explain a little bit about the conditions there. Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, at this particular time in history, as with most places and most trade unions around the world women weren't really particularly involved in the struggle actively up until the point of the revolution really and through the work of the Bolsheviks. And so, you know, around the world and in Russia up until this point really women were kind of seen as not to be involved in the class struggle, not to be involved in the trade unions. They were seen as less intellectual, maybe less developed in these points, less in favour of strike action and so they didn't, you know, really get included and hadn't really fought for that particularly. And I guess that kind of reflects the quite patriarchal nature of society at the time, particularly in Russia women were really seen as the property of men. And from this, you know, even in sort of czarist law things flow from that that women were completely subjected to men's ideas. And the sort of laws also reflected that, you know, women were allowed to be beaten by their husbands, that was kind of legal. And, you know, I guess even in the sort of countryside, the situation was worse I suppose for women where there was a great hold of the church on society and they had a really firm hold on people's views. And I guess women were also quite, you know, sort of unable to like engage in the same way that men were because they were locked out of many different things. They weren't able to access education in the same way that men were. In fact, I think at the time, you know, prior to the Revolution, something like 13% of women were even literate. Many women when they were sort of girls had to stop going to school and go into the home and sort of take care of people there and really do this kind of hearth work of, you know, the domestic labour basically. And even those who were in work for them, the situation wasn't much better. The rate of pay was far, far lower than that of the men and face that kind of question of the double burden of work and domestic labour that we are having to face still today really. So those are kind of the conditions in which, you know, the Bolsheviks were sort of discussing and entering the question of the women's question really. Right. Yeah. So from these conditions, what sort of, yeah, political points and questions were raised? Yeah. So I think I guess there's sort of like two sides to it. These are the terrible material conditions that we need to change and do something about. And then there's the sort of political side of how do we engage women in politics? How do we ensure that women are part of, you know, the way of changing society? And so for the Bolsheviks, how can we get them involved in the class struggle essentially? And I think, you know, some of those questions are very similar to what we're facing today. I think that question now, how do we get more women involved in politics? And how do we go about finding out what the issues are and how to begin to solve those? And none of that can be achieved without women being thoroughly involved in the class struggle. And that was the key question for the Bolsheviks. You know, it wasn't about, OK, how do we set up a separate struggle that we can engage women in and have a particular meeting on something that only women are interested in. It was about, OK, understanding that the class struggle is inherently about transforming society of which women are a part of. And we need to overthrow class society to do that. Women have to be involved and to change the conditions for women. We have to overthrow class society. So the struggle is one and the same. And so this was really, you know, the kind of key question, I guess, for the Bolsheviks is how can we build this workers movement? And so I guess that was kind of the way forward was thinking, right, well, we're not going to engage women, as I said before, on a separate issue, but in the actual class struggle itself. And I think that was what attracted women to the Bolshevik party as well, that it wasn't some kind of separate thing on the side. They were inherently part of the struggle. The struggle is for them in the same way as women, you know, are struggling for everybody as well. Yeah, so what did that eventually lead to? Like what did the Russian Revolution achieve for women? Well, massive, massive changes, you know, really understate the kind of changes that it achieved. I think one kind of key thing that everyone's aware of is, of course, the question of the franchise and of the vote. So this was something, a question that had been coming up around the rest of Europe, I think, around this time, but actually very few other countries had given the vote to women at all. And yet the Russian Revolution, this was for the Russian Revolution, for the Bolsheviks, actually, this was a key question that they, they followed through with, and actually they were, you know, one of the first states in the world that gave women the right to vote. And what's really interesting about this is that after the Bolsheviks had, you know, come to power and extended the franchise to everybody, or not really that the Bolsheviks had come to power, but you know, had kind of ushered in the power of the workers through the revolution, other countries also granted women the vote. And we can see, you know, this kind of huge transformation that took place didn't just affect women in Russia, it actually had an impact on women around the rest of the world as well. And I think that's a really, you know, an important thing that shows the power of the class struggle that it can have, the pressure that it can put on, or the states as well. So, you know, there's this political question of the right to vote, but of course then there's also the other material conditions that were changed as well. So women, you know, were no longer considered the property of men, which is a very important big step. They were also granted some key things around giving them, you know, rights to their own body, so free access to abortion. Special maternity wards were set up, and they brought in paid maternity leave before and after birth, you know, not long after 1917. And just to put that in context, the UK didn't give this kind of maternity rights until 1975. So the things that were achieved for women after the revolution were leagues ahead of anywhere else. There was also changes in, I was saying about, you know, like legal rights of women. So in particular in relation to marriage, like marriage didn't have to happen. It wasn't that everybody had to be married, and access to divorce was massively increased. I think as well, changes that happened in the workplace also impacted women because women were in the workplace too. So things like shortening the working day that was achieved had a big impact on women. And I think what's really key is the recognition of domestic labour as having value, and I think that's something that in class society, it definitely was taken away from women. And that's why women sort of face this kind of degradation, you know, as we've talked about in previous podcasts. And I think just that general change to the economy in Russia and to the social structure that flowed from that had a big impact on women who, of course, had been doubly oppressed in the workplace with the domestic labour. So these were really key changes that were able to be achieved after the revolution. Yeah, so that's of course incredible. And I guess like the question is like, to what extent were women enforced in those changes? Like were they being basically drawn into politics much more than before? Were they like actively enforced in politics now with the new policies and reforms? Or yeah, how did that change essentially their enforcement in politics? Yeah, I think this is a really important question actually because these things sometimes it can be seen as they've been done to women or they've just been kind of applied and are great for women. But women were really heavily involved in all of these changes in the revolution itself and the insurrection, you know. In fact, it was women that led the insurrection in 1917 and February, you know, with the Women's Day marches. But also in terms of their formulation of these reforms and being involved in the emerging workers' democracy, women were definitely really heavily involved in that. So they played a key role in the Soviets. Even from the 1905 Soviets, women had been involved in those, so the workers' councils that had, you know, spontaneously been organised by the workers themselves, women were elected to them as well and as well as participating in the vote. So it wasn't just that they were, you know, having a say in electing some men, they were also themselves elected. And, you know, there were even examples of certain factories where women, the women took a larger share of the votes. Actually, there were more women than men in the leadership positions of the Soviets. And, you know, this is obviously uneven and different, depending on which part of what you look at. But I think on the whole, we can see their involvement increase in there. It wasn't just in the Soviets as well. Women also were taking position at higher place. So Alexander Kolantai, for example, was appointed as the People's Commissar of Social Welfare in the kind of first Bolshevik-type government. And she really was the world's first female minister. So again, we can see not just in terms of the material gains that the revolution provided for women being world-leading, but also in terms of political access for women. It's also world-leading. And then if you think about, you know, not just in the terms of the places where women were being elected to, but more generally women were involved in and leading many of the strikes and the protests that were taking place and kind of naturally taking part in the general revolutionary work, all over leafletting and flyerings, speaking at public meetings, so having a platform there. They were involved in the defence of the revolution as well. And I think, you know, those kind of show this top-to-bottom involvement of women, basically. And, you know, just on the whole, women were engaged in politics much more often because they were having their domestic duties and the things that they were having to do in the home slightly decreasing as the revolution went on and it was able to, you know, begin to provide material changes like nurseries and things. Freeing up women's time is one of the key things that has to happen for women to be more involved. So it wasn't just like magic wonders been waved because the revolution has taken place, but there are material changes happening that the economy can now provide because it is, you know, a nationalised planned economy that's allowing women's participation in politics. And so this is why, again, we see the great engagement of women after the revolution. Yeah, and I guess, of course, in that time, because it sounds like, you know, I guess, like, from the explanation that everyone was sort of on board with the Bolshevik idea of, like, you know, putting forward the class questions and stuff like this. But obviously, as what we know today, there is, of course, the ideas floating around of, you know, liberal feminism and things like this. And that's something that the Bolsheviks also had to engage with and they also had to answer, because that was, of course, also like a presence, basically these dominant ideas in society there as well. So how did they approach that? How did they win over as well women to their programme? And yeah, how did they approach this question, essentially? I mean, this is, yeah, a key issue. And as you say, we're still kind of grappling with this question. But of course, liberals had this view that liberal feminists had this view that the emancipation of women was a separate question. It had to be fought for as a separate issue. And the Bolsheviks rejected that idea. Now that's not to say that there weren't, you know, special commissions and conferences of women and questions that were faced by women discussed by the Bolsheviks that absolutely were. But that was never dealt with as an issue that was separate or added on to or not a part of the class struggle. It was always situated within that idea that the fight for reforms is the fight to fundamentally change society. And I mean, this difference comes from obviously the fact that liberal feminists don't have this understanding that it's class society and it's, you know, class itself that creates this gender depression and the differences that flow from that. And so they didn't see change fundamentally changing society as a key question. And so their way of, you know, the meetings that were being held by the liberal feminists were kind of much more about, well, we need to just, I guess, a similar today like educate people and change the viewpoints and have us these separate question conferences and meetings. And that meant that they didn't necessarily address any of the key concerns that were being faced by women. I mean, primarily the war itself that was being fought and the question of bread and food and feeding yourself, you know, these basic, basic questions. But the Bolsheviks could provide an answer to that. They could show that actually these questions that are being faced by women that are being, you know, the problems being faced by women can be addressed by changing society because these are class questions that are being raised. That is how the Bolsheviks won women over to the class struggle and to the fight to transform society, whereas the liberal feminists were unable to do so. And this, you know, is the, I guess, the key kind of difference in the way we need to fight is on the basis of we're fighting to change society, which will answer these questions that are being raised for women. Yeah, yeah. And I guess, indeed, like this is something not, not an eye, because of course the Russian revolution is incredible. And that is something that cannot be covered alone in this podcast, unfortunately, of how much it has achieved for women. But this is definitely not an isolated case, as we know that around the world there have been a lot of women's struggles as well and not just in the present as we know it, but also historic examples like in Britain as well and, you know, like the suffragists and things like this. So yeah, I was wondering if you could, you could expand on that, like what other lessons are there, what other examples are there that we can learn from? Yeah, there's so many. I mean, just a few of the key ones that I think are really important where we see this role of women being absolutely fundamental to the class struggle, they gave back a really long time and some key ones I think that's important to look at is maybe the Paris commune, for example, where similar to the Russian revolution, we saw women leading the insurrectionary moments and the same in Paris, in Versailles, you know, I think like this idea of the fish wives and the women taking to the streets with weapons and kind of arming themselves as sort of immortalised in people's understanding of this time. These are some really important historical examples that I would encourage you to look at about how women led striking workers out in these events. If we look a bit more kind of, you know, like at the situation in Britain, a really important sort of event to look at I think is the Brian and May strike which took place and was led by women, women workers in the factoring. And I think what's really kind of key about this is that the women that were involved in bringing about some not just for themselves, but you know this I think this strike we can see as being instrumental in bringing about the change to kind of spurring on new unionism, like this massive movement in trade unionism in Britain where we see a big upturn in the class struggle and workers kind of brought into the struggle who had perhaps been unionised before. We see, you know, all of this kind of, I think can be brought down to stemming from the Brian and May strike. And what's really phenomenal about it is that some of them were little more than girls to be honest, really young women who fought really militantly and they kind of led the way by showing that people who had been thought of as unionisable in the past can be unionised and they organised for themselves. They went, you know, knocking on doors, raising strike fund and raising their own demands and gathering for their own support and it kind of showed how, you know through the class struggle, through struggling for some reforms, they didn't have a better idea than they planned. So they were kind of, you know, campaigning to begin with to make their conditions safer that as people will probably know, you know, to not be eating lunch around phosphorus and poisonous chemicals and not have to pay fines, for example. And they went on to demand much greater things than this changes to the structure of the day and the length of the working day and it shows you how through struggle for something that was, to begin with, they learnt that they were actually far stronger and were able to achieve even more. And I think this is a great example of women acting and fighting that we can look to as an example of real strength within the workers movement that I think sent ripples far beyond just what they were achieving there. So I think this is a really key, you know, historic struggle for reforms where we see a section of society who, like I was saying, you know, I guess we've seen where women are seen as less educated, less able to strike. Here's an example that totally blows out the water and I think history unfairly writes women out of the picture but their role in struggles is instrumental right throughout history. You know, we can see, you know, like you mentioned the suffragettes, I think this is another great example of that as well where we see really very militant women fighting for a reform that they saw as being something that they were forced just having the right to vote as we know, given the fact that we're still fighting for many reforms today doesn't provide the answer to everything but that struggle showed just what lengths women were prepared to go to to win a reform that potentially could ease their conditions and could give them a voice at the table and they faced not only, of course, you know, hardship through the struggle, arrest, they faced actual torture by the police and the beating that they were subjected to and even death in the case of a few of the suffragettes and this campaign was huge, you know, they campaigned right up and down the country, they brought women together in meetings, they spoke publicly, they campaigned to collect signatures collecting in some cases, you know, hundreds of thousands of signatures the way they worked and organized to engage women right across the country and men as well on the point of the struggle, I think it shows you that women are able to fight over these questions and of course, there's so much to say, we could go into the role that Sylvia Pankhurst played as a communist organizer and how she went even further than the Pankhurst and things but yeah, this is a really important struggle for us to look to and then I think, there's so many to talk about, there's particular strikes as well in Britain that I think we should look to and then there's a lot of questions from the female workers there places like the Dagnam strike, the Ford Dagnam strike where women despite kind of men and male members of the family not wanting them to stroke and fought for equal pay, for equal work, for skilled labor, for their labor to be recognized as skilled, the Grunswick strike as well I think is a fantastic example of this that I would encourage people to look at where again people are less likely to take action so in this case many migrant women workers actually were incredibly militants and then of course we can look more recently again to the role women are playing in strikes but to something like the Arab Spring perhaps where we saw women militantly protesting the streets and calling male workers out alongside them as well Yeah, no exactly and I think also like it shows maybe that you can expand on that but like how in these revolutionary times and in these strikes and in these movements how much consciousness changes in their perception of like say of how women are perceived in society I guess maybe one of the examples is the minor strike I don't know if you have, yeah if you can expand on that how that has changed Yeah absolutely I think that's key that it's not just with the not single events issues when these things happen because with the minor strike I think this is a good example of where women weren't necessarily leading this strike and it wasn't a strike that was to do with improving the conditions for women or it wasn't about a female workplace it was men who were the ones that were on strike but we see the role of women there as absolutely instrumental to that campaign and I know that they weren't successful but that's not on account of the role of the working class in any way actually the role that women played in that strike was to support the minors organising again you know protest movements and strike committees and people might be aware of the women against pit closures where they're organising this kind of support and it was really important in changing consciousness like you say towards women so there was often a view beforehand that was quite again that sort of patriarchal type view with women in this role being domestic and in the home or perhaps as a kind of sexual object for example and it was through the experience of fighting together of men and women alongside each other that began to change that kind of consciousness so consciousness towards women that perhaps liberal feminists would say is the thing that we need to educate out or change was actually changed on the basis of events and also we can see through this you know the change in the view that women are able to fight and women are just as tenacious and are just as strong class fighters as men and there's not really a difference there and I think the minor strikes are a very good example of showing that really and I guess it's similar to, I mean it's a similar picture isn't it to what we were talking about earlier with 1917 and this view prior to the revolution and the Bolsheviks winning women over and into the movement that they were less intelligent less educated and yeah they were the system not able to educate them but that doesn't stop class consciousness from developing you know it's not going to stop somebody from understanding their role within society on the basis of events and being able to fight just as hard as anybody else exactly and I guess that's why in most cases we see indeed women taking the forefront in strikes and in struggles and in revolutions you know indeed Russian revolutions example where the female textile workers that has essentially sparked a revolution by going on strike but the Arab sprain is an example of it there's indeed as you mentioned a lot of cases where women have taken the lead in that sense because they are the most exploited in the press and society and therefore a true sort of a barometer of the discontent brewing amongst the working class basically under a crisis of capitalism and I guess like because all of the things that we have mentioned and discussed all of that involved indeed you know like the Marxist ideas flowing in society and all of these things that have basically led women to strike or to struggle and to fight are all class questions essentially that Marxist have always been involved in or even led into success like the Bolsheviks have so how come that like today we can hear a lot about how Marxism is sort of neglecting the women's question or it's not looking or basically like yeah not taking it seriously and therefore needs updating you know with intersectional ideas with identity politics also sort of yeah alien class ideas are floating around that Marxism is not covering the women's question even though we see from historic examples that they have actually done a lot amongst these struggles and the women's fight so yeah could you maybe like explain that like where does that come from this idea that Marxism is not taking the women's question seriously basically yeah okay so of course I think this comes from the fact that as you say we have seen where we've seen socialists starting to transform society we've seen the Marxist ideas begin to be implemented massive changes have occurred but the key example that we have in history of that happening was as we've discussed the revolution and of course what happened to the revolution was that it began to degenerate under the Stalinist regime and as a consequence we saw many of the gains that had been implemented for women rolled back and so this is the kind of prevailing view I suppose of what happened like we saw failures now I don't have time to go into all of the reasons why Stalinists the generation occurred in Russia it did happen and that's kind of sunk into consciousness and perhaps people incorrectly associate that with Marxist ideas but also you know here's an example unfortunately where it didn't happen now we understand as Marxists that that's not you know that's not the kind of ideas that we're fighting for and that it is possible to change society into fundamentally bring about these changes that will happen they bring about major changes for women but you know what happened within the Stalinist generation of Russia I think is important to look at in a little bit more detail to show you you know kind of how these gains were rolled back because even though the Stalinist declared that the women's question had been solved it definitely hadn't you know and actually when they came to power and began to roll back what happened was that thousands of domestic tasks returned to women and also the games that I talked about before were kind of clawed away so abortion was made illegal again actually in 1936 and those key questions around you know divorce being kind of made more freely available for women that was rolled back it became much more expensive and actually things like prizes were introduced you know for the size of the family that could be created and I think key questions that then he kind of gains locked women back into the home in a way so where there had been pushes to make child care much more readily available to free up the time of women from those domestic roles those kind of things were clawed back so child care was made available only for the times when women were in work which brought of course back this question of like the double oppression where women would return from the home and immediately then had these child care kind of needs placed back upon them and then the education that women were receiving was changed as well so girls had previously been brought into the schools which was fantastic but then they were made to do girls subjects so there was sort of taught housework and things that would prepare them for this domestic role so again rolling back the kind of progress being made towards equality and so we can clearly see that the generation of the Soviet Union brought about the degeneration of women's rights as well now there are still I mean those things did happen and were absolutely terrible there are also some things I think worth pointing out that were beneficial to women that remained so because of the planned economy it meant that certain gains stayed so you know pregnant women were still allowed to switch to lighter work things like night work and underground work had been prohibited for women infant mortality was massively reduced and actually the education of women for some was still fantastic so you know if we look at for example higher education for women now whilst this wasn't accessible for women actually in the USSR in the 1970s 49% of the places in higher education were taken up by women and the only other places in the world that had this were places like Finland France Sweden and the USA so there were still some gains that had been provided and that came from the planned economy itself which just shows you know that this transformation of the economy is a really key component for Marxist in transforming the situation for women that capitalism and class society generally just simply cannot afford and I think child care is another good example I mean I know I've already kind of talked about it but these places for child care I think are really key because when you contrast that to today's society many mothers now and fathers will know that to work now means sending a child to a nursery and that requires you to spend so much of the wage that you've earned on the child care and so you know I guess the sort of position of the Soviet Union did still have these gains that were slightly beneficial and did materially make life a lot easier and yeah like I said I think the key thing here is that it's this nationalised planned economy that allowed these things to happen but of course then there's all of the other negative sides as well that came about because of the star generation workers generally obviously had their kind of involvement in the democracy removed and same was true of women as well so there was these restrictions as well and so yeah this is I think why we maybe see today this point that all this point of view that Marxism can't adequately answer the question of the questions that are faced by women but of course I'd argue absolutely opposite of that because even under a degenerate system we can still see that you know material gains are provided by the transformation in the economy and so we would argue obviously that we need to go much much further than that and give workers control and you know women obviously would be a key part of that but this is a really key question I think about the role of you know the economy and class society and of course we can look to Russia today and see that with the instigation of the capitalist economy being brought back in and capitalism itself the gains of women have been reversed even far further than they had been under the style of the generation where we see you know collapse of social services like greater unemployment all these things that affect women to a greater extent as well all those benefits of the planned economy they've all been completely wiped away and systematically wiped out and so you know I think looking at these three stages almost is really helpful to see what it is that we need to do to eradicate oppression in the months of hate women properly today yeah exactly I think that that is sort of the main point right like it is thanks to the change of the conditions the material conditions in Russia through the planned economy that they managed to grant say all of these reforms and these changes and of course for the women workers into these, yeah democratically into these decisions as well so yeah it's more like it's rather like despite Stalin essentially that they did not thanks to him as some people may say but it's thanks to the planned economies despite him that they managed to still indeed like enjoy say the sort of the aftermath of the revolution essentially that have changed these conditions in Russia but yeah I guess like sort of to go to the main points right sort of to conclude what what can we like today as as Marxist take as like from all of these historic examples in these lessons for our struggle today for the women's emancipation like is there anything in particular that you want to sort of you know point out or bring home to to everyone yeah I mean I think the key thing is that these reforms that we saw one not just in the Russian Revolution but in the other struggles I talked about as well the reforms that were won were fought for by working class people and that is how all reforms are won and so if we want to see changes for women and for everybody in the future it's again going to be on this question of the class struggle and you know making sure and bringing women into that class struggle is absolutely essential and of course women are 50 percent of the workforce there can't be class struggle without women being involved in it and so that's the way that the that we need that's the way that we'll bring about change in the future is on this question of the class struggle and really that's of course you know absolutely essential because women today despite there being you know many material advances are actually still facing we're still facing many of the questions that women in czarist were facing especially on this question of being more involved in politics and kind of the fact that when we see any reforms that had been won clawed away when we see austerity type policies and when we see these things it's women that are affected the foremost by this and so there is this question of needing to eradicate those questions and solve those questions too that again can only be solved on the question of as we say you know nationalizing the economy having a planned economy and using all of those the massive resources that are available in society to alleviate the burden that is placed on women to bring in you know socialized childcare, socialized domestic work and having an economy that can actually provide the basis for this is the first step to being able to free women and emancipate them we have to eradicate scarcity you know we have to bring about a society where all can be provided for including children and you know making provisions for like we've said the domestic labor to be alleviated and none of that is impossible under capitalism if anything actually what we're seeing is we're going backwards in terms of the gains that have been made and so we can see I guess from all of these struggles that the task ahead of us is quite clear we need to fundamentally change society we need this planned economy we need it to be on the basis of workers democratic control not you know any other kind of way of tinkering or reforming society and it's only on this basis that we can start to transform the kind of sexist views and the violence against women and all those other you know pernicious kind of things that come about as a consequence of this reduced role that women have in society so I think you know this all comes back down to this this question of the class struggle and women being involved in it to the greatest extent and no revolution is going to happen unless those women are involved in it and so that's the key kind of thing really if we want to free women and we want to have women that aren't just you know it's not just about having free like equal access to work and equal access to being depressed you know we don't want that we don't want equal access to being exploited we want women and well we want everybody to be free from exploitation oppression and to be able to live fulfilling lives and none of that can happen under the capitalist system and so we're really that's the key task here is to to be involved in the class struggle to be involved in strike movements to fundamentally change society so we're fighting you know in the words of I guess the women of the textile workers who fought for international women's day we're fighting not just for bread but also for roses too nice well thank you so much Tash for this excellent discussion and thanks to our listeners for listening to this episode of women's liberation the Marxist position before we go please make sure to check out our website and the wealth of material that we have on the women's question I highly recommend visiting our education hub socialist.net slash education and we have a range of resources on everything from how to fight oppression to philosophy and more the website of our international the international Marxist tendency has also a wealth of material that we highly recommend and all of the links that I've mentioned will be in the show notes of the podcast if you like the ideas we've spoken about then you should definitely join us women are involved in the social struggles and the question of women's oppression is only a gender to a degree that we've not seen in decades. Sexism and the oppression of women is an integral part of capitalism and they can only be removed once we do with the material conditions that allow these to exist. That's why we fight for socialism and you should join us in our struggle. This was the final episode of this series we hope you enjoyed it and found it useful and if you have any feedback for us then please feel free to get in touch with us through our social media pages. I've been your host Lubna Badi and you've been listening to the Marxist voice brought to you by Socialist Appeal. Have a revolutionary week.