Women's Liberation Is Essential For The Revolution

The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the Revolution, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its victory. The main objective of the Revolution is to destroy the system ot exploitation and build a new society which releases the potentialities of human beings, reconciling them with labour and with nature. This is the context within which the question of women's emancipation arises. Generally speaking, women are the most oppressed, humiliated and exploited beings in society. A woman is even exploited by a man who is himself exploited, humiliated by the man who is crushed under the boot of the boss and the settler. How can the Revolution triumph without the liberation of women? Will it be possible to get rid of the system of exploitation while keeping one part of society exploited? One cannot only partially wipe out exploitation and oppresion, one cannot tear up only half the weeds without even stronger ones spreading out from the half that has survived. How then can one make a revolution without mobilising women? If more than half the exploited and oppressed people consist of women, how can they be left on the fringe of the struggle? To make a revolution it is necessary to mobilise all the exploited and oppressed, and consequently women as well. If it is to be victorious, the Revolution must eliminate the whole system of exploitation and oppression, liberating j / / the exploited and the oppressed. Therefore it must eliminate the exploitation and oppression of women. Moreover, if we also consider the basic need for the revolution to be continued by the new generation, how can we ensure the revolutionary education of the generation which will carry on our work if mothers, the first educators, are marginal to the revolutionary process? How can one turn the homes of the exploited and the oppressed into cells of revolutionary struggle, centres for the diffusion of our line, encouraging the involvement of the family, if women remain apathetic to this process, indifferent to the society which is being nd deaf to the call of the people?