Dear readers,

a communist women’s organization as a strategic component of a communist organization or even party has been the exception rather than the rule, historically as well as today. It is with pride and joy that we would like to share with you some of the results of the first women’s conference of the Communist Women. For several weeks last autumn, we held an open discussion throughout the entire organization about the state of development of the women’s organization, the line of the women’s revolution and the next political and organizational steps we want to take in the coming months and years.

At the end of this discussion, all the issues raised were discussed in greater depth at the first women’s conference, so that we as women were able to unite more on the basis of our existing foundation, collectively evaluate the past period and discuss the next steps, including steps towards internal organizational independence, further development of the independent work of the women’s organization and the development of our own women’s leadership.¹

The first women’s conference is a qualitative leap, not only for the women of the organization, but for Communist Construction (Kommunistischer Aufbau) as a whole. It is the result of the irreconcilable struggle for women’s revolution and the focus on the development of communist women cadres. It is a result of the experiences gained and struggles waged in recent years and now gives us the opportunity to generalize them in order to raise the organization to a new level as a whole. After all, the examination of the line of the women’s revolution, the understanding of a communist women’s organization in theory and practice and its relationship to the organization and, prospectively, the Communist Party, form the basis for the organizational development of Communist Construction and Communist Women (Kommunistische Frauen).

We would like to begin with a brief description of the development of Communist Women and how individual areas of communist women’s work have developed in recent years. In the evaluation, we will provide insights into organizational development as well as anti-patriarchal and theoretical work.

Following that, we briefly outline the current status of our Women’s Revolution line, on the basis of which we will further unify and continue discussions on the issues to be deepened or clarified in the coming period.

Building on the line of the women’s revolution, we present our ideological understanding of a communist women’s organization, its relationship to the communist party and the importance of organizational independence. Finally, we conclude with further reflections on the tasks of a communist women’s organization. We hope you enjoy reading this publication and look forward to stimulating discussions, feedback and criticism.

The development of the „Communist Women“

The Role of the Anti-patriarchal Struggle prior to our Foundation

From the very beginning of Communist Construction, the struggle against patriarchy was one of the ideological cornerstones of the organization. Early on, the theoretical aim of guaranteeing special support for women comrades in their cadre development was derived from this. To this end, even before the founding of Communist Women, women had the opportunity to come together in a specific framework, to discuss and develop together as women. However, prior to the founding of Communist Women, there were no special rights such as those of a women’s organization, and the scope for discussion and organization remained limited. Nevertheless, these small-scale experiences and discussions laid the foundations for the establishment of a communist women’s organization and the development of a women-led struggle for the women’s revolution.

The struggle against patriarchy also played a continuous role in mass work even before the founding of Communist Women. For example, the organization’s first attempts at its own mass work were made in the progressive protests in relation to the „New Year’s Eve attacks 2015/2016“. Due to the close ties to the Kurdish liberation struggle and the women revolutionaries from Turkey and Kurdistan, the theory of women’s revolution was a major component of the work from the very beginning. In the beginning, this part played a greater role than the situation of women workers in Germany. Over the years and as the organization developed, this changed and a more correct relationship between women’s struggle and class struggle in Germany was established.

The Founding of the “Communist Women”

The founding of the women’s organization was preceded by an extensive discussion process, which was concluded in 2019 at the 2nd Congress of Communist Construction. The founding was a milestone for the development of the organization as a whole. From the very beginning, the discussions about the founding of a women’s organization were conducted with the understanding that this should not lead to a static separation between the struggles and that the responsibility for the struggle for the women’s revolution should not be outsourced to the women’s structure alone. For the struggle against patriarchy is inevitably linked to all areas of revolutionary work, which is why it remains the responsibility of all members of the organization to recognize and assume their own responsibility in this struggle. For this to succeed, however, there is a need for a communist women’s organization that ensures that the line of the women’s revolution is represented everywhere, that the struggle against patriarchy is waged irreconcilably and that the development of women cadres is not neglected at any time.

Organizational Development

In the publication of the results of the 4th Congress of Communist Construction, the following was written on organizational development: „The quantitative and qualitative growth of the organization, its various fields of work and organs has necessitated a series of changes in the working methods and structure of the organization. The Congress has decided on appropriate changes that will orient the structures of the organization towards further growth. This requires a dynamic organizational framework that is guided by a democratic centralism adapted to this development.“

All discussions about the organizational development of the women’s organization can only be conducted in the context of the overall organizational development. The quantitative growth of the organization was also reflected in the women’s organization and made organizational adjustments and qualitative further development necessary. A central task that we face today and will face in the future is to generalize and use the experience and knowledge we have gained to a greater extent in order to further develop Marxism-Leninism in these areas and apply it to concrete circumstances. It is also important to collectivize the experiences in order to ensure both renewal and continuity within the organization, so that quantity can become higher quality for the entire organization. Organizational development also includes the orientation already published at the 4th Congress to develop a separate women’s leadership.

Anti-Patriarchal Work

In 2023, we published the brochure on dealing with patriarchal violence, in which the general guidelines and principles of our work were set out for the first time. Since the organization was founded, the reality of patriarchy has presented us with the task of dealing with patriarchal misconduct and violence, both within and outside our own ranks. The experiences of recent years present us today and in the future with the task of critically evaluating and reviewing approaches and methods, developing them further and constantly systematizing, improving and professionalizing anti-patriarchal work. Even if the fight against patriarchal misconduct and violence is not the raison d’être of Communist Women, the work has nevertheless played a major role in recent years. A number of discussions and processes were held, temporary and long-term exclusions were carried out and successful work with offenders was carried out. However, there were also misjudgments and mistakes in the application of the principles we formulated ourselves. Even though we have a relatively developed work in this area, it is still not at the level of development that we are aiming for according to our theoretical requirements. In the coming period, we must train and develop more comrades in this area.

However, guidelines alone are not enough. A central component of anti-patriarchal work is the development of gender awareness as an elementary component of the development of personality and cadres. At the same time, however, we must not be under the illusion that this can completely prevent patriarchal misconduct and violence. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of every organization to provide the best possible education and prevention work.

At the first women’s conference of Communist Women, we began to discuss where our working methods need to be changed and what concrete steps we need to take as a women’s organization in order to professionalize this work in the coming period. This includes in particular the generalization of the experiences made so far, which must include an analysis of the mistakes we have made in order to be able to draw the right conclusions for the future. This generalization must contain binding guidelines and defined procedures that can be used to review the work and provide accountability. In addition, clearly defined procedures can help to convey security, especially to inexperienced comrades, to give them something to work with, so that they can act faster and more independently and avoid avoidable mistakes. These are just some of the tasks that need to be done to develop anti-patriarchal work. A detailed orientation of this work as a result of the discussions beyond the women’s conference will be published in the future.

Theoretical Work

In addition to the brochure on handling patriarchal violence, the women’s class analysis, the fundamentals of communist women’s work, elaborations on the topic of patriarchy in the book „Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism“ and the publication on the topic of „gender“ are some of the theoretical foundations that have been developed in recent years and which provide us with a basis for the necessary standardization, discussion and deepening. Many other questions, which patriarchy – in conjunction with the capitalist mode of production – confronts us with, are still waiting to be addressed.

However, the line of the women’s revolution and our stance on the women’s liberation struggle can be found in dozens of other publications of Communist Construction. This makes sense, since the struggle is linked to all areas of the class struggle. At the same time, however, this also means that there is no single, condensed publication in which all questions on the topic of women’s revolution are answered – rather, there are many set pieces spread across many different texts. As a result, it is often not easy to fully understand the line “ at first go“. In future, therefore, the task will be to find ways to bring these set pieces together more strongly and to formulate and bring together individual questions and existing explanations and answers to a greater extent.

The Line of Women’s Revolution

The line of the women’s revolution is an elementary component of the line of organization, on the basis of which organizational consequences arise in the organizational structure. At the same time, it is – like Marxism-Leninism as a whole – not a rigid, unchanging ideology, quite the opposite. It must be the aspiration of all communists to constantly review and deepen existing analyses for their accuracy and currency, not to dogmatically adhere to known dogmas. Only in this way can we succeed in adapting revolutionary practice and organizational development to the objective conditions and needs of the class struggle. The development of the line of the women’s revolution is therefore never complete. In the following, we wish to present the current state of this analysis, on the basis of which the organization is unified and the line continues to develop.

The Character of the Women’s Revolution

The fight against patriarchy is a central task of the socialist revolution simply because of its interconnectedness with capitalism. The social division of labor according to gender, the division into productive and reproductive, social and private labor is both a source of profit and a dividing line between the proletarian woman and the proletarian man. It leads to our class, the class of the exploited, itself being divided into oppressors and oppressed. Patriarchy is characterized by the oppression of women by men. It is based on the fact that women – sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on the needs of capital – are forced into the private sphere, into the field of reproductive work. Here they are responsible for a large part of the unpaid work, which is why they are not only oppressed as women, but especially exploited as proletarian women. All other manifestations of patriarchy in relation to other genders and sexualities result from the social division of labor, in which women are ascribed a specific social role in the production process. For this reason, the proletarian woman is also the revolutionary subject of the women’s revolution, the revolutionary subject in the struggle against patriarchy, since only she herself can liberate herself. This also necessitates that it is women themselves who must lead the women’s revolution.

When we speak of the women’s revolution and seek to deepen our understanding of it, there is no short and concise definition. We speak of a social revolution whose aim is to overturn gender relations and shatter the patriarchy.

There is presumably a consensus in the communist movement that we must lay the foundations for the socialist revolution today, that the destruction of the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat must be our goal. The question of how the relations between genders can be revolutionized and what struggles and methods are needed for this is a different matter. It is a widespread and fatal misconception that women’s liberation can be realized through the socialist revolution alone. The women’s revolution must begin today. This is the guarantee that the foundations for successfully leading the socialist revolution as a class, side by side, are already being laid today. The women’s revolution and the socialist revolution go hand in hand. We are already living the women’s revolution today by:

• revolutionizing our thinking, feeling and acting as a revolutionary collective, as the nucleus of the new society, and developing our proletarian gender consciousness as part of our personal development,
• making the slogan „Women forward in Party building!“ a reality in our practice by paying special attention to the development of women cadres and anchoring the struggle against patriarchy in the cornerstones of Party building,
• confronting bourgeois feminism and postmodernism with the development of a proletarian women’s movement and
• by realizing our aim of taking the fight against patriarchy and for women’s revolution into all class struggles today.

The better we succeed today in advancing the women’s revolution and meeting these demands, the stronger it can become as an effective engine of socialist revolution. And vice versa, it is also clear that the women’s revolution can only unfold its full potential once the socialist revolution is victorious and this in turn becomes the motor of women’s revolution.

The character and the main thrust of the women’s revolution will change greatly with the socialist revolution. This is due in particular to the fact that under capitalist conditions we focus above all on the proletarian woman as a multi-exploited worker and fight to end this state of affairs with the overthrow of capital. Under capitalist conditions, the women’s revolution as a social revolution therefore simultaneously encompasses the targeted efforts to change the way we think, feel and act and the patriarchal-bourgeois personality, as well as the class struggle for the liberation of women as workers. The first point, the revolutionization of personality, is still subject to narrow limits under capitalism. The capitalist system only functions on the basis of the sexual division of labor and thus the performance of reproductive work within the nuclear family. A corresponding socialization of all people into the corresponding gender roles is therefore a prerequisite for its continued existence.

Complete gender liberation will only be possible once the material conditions have changed and the women’s revolution under socialism can be continued with new means and methods. With the abolition of private property, the social division of labor based on gender will become increasingly obsolete. Accordingly, there will no longer be a need for ideological justification of the social division of labor in the form of gender roles. Practical education in these roles also becomes superfluous. This will be the first time that the foundations exist for fundamentally revolutionizing the relationship between genders on the road to communism.

Developing Gender Consciousness

As already mentioned, the transformation of our personalities must nevertheless be on the agenda today. We need to develop a proletarian gender consciousness, both within the organization and within our class. Gender consciousness means an awareness of the social position and function of the different genders in capitalism and how we, as communists, must relate to this. This includes understanding whether you yourself are part of the oppressed or oppressing gender. But it goes far beyond recognizing being oppressed as a woman or recognizing being an oppressor as a man.

It is just as important to recognize which patriarchal and bourgeois characteristics are associated with the respective socialization, where they come from and how we can combat them as part of our personality development. And to have a willingness to actually do this. Gender awareness therefore encompasses both an awareness of one’s own gender and the associated thinking, feeling and acting, as well as an awareness of the other genders and how patriarchal, gender-based socialization affects them and their development. Only with this understanding can we be in a position to criticize, support and develop each other.

The Communist Women’s Organization

If we want to gain a clearer picture of what the purpose of a communist women’s organization actually is, what its tasks are and what its relationship to the communist party is or should be, then the basis for this is the point mentioned above: an understanding of the line of the women’s revolution and the observation that the proletarian woman is its revolutionary subject, that she must accordingly be the one to lead this struggle.

However, she can only lead this struggle if an appropriate form of organization is created in which it can be developed and organized. A form of organization in which the women cadres of the party are trained to take over the leadership of the women’s revolution and thus also the leadership of the class struggle. This form of organization is the communist women’s organization as part of the party. The women’s organization is therefore neither a place of retreat nor an end in itself, but fulfills a concrete function both in party building and in revolutionary work as a whole.

The Relationship between the Women’s Organization and the Party

In the communist movement, the question of a separate women’s organization is highly controversial. The arguments behind this are many and varied, but the main concerns are usually about the unity of the party, the fragmentation of structures and the outsourcing of the anti-patriarchal struggle to the women in the organization.

Some of the concerns are certainly due to patriarchal motives and a lack of trust in the women comrades that they can lead their work independently in the interests of the party. However, it would be wrong to reduce the criticisms and questions relating to the compatibility of a women’s organization with democratic centralism to this alone, as the concerns are ultimately not simply plucked out of the thin air and it is the task of a communist party to prevent precisely this fraying and the disintegration of different threads. We shall devote ourselves at this point to the ideological clarification of this question.

What must the Relationship between the Women’s Organization and the Party look like?

The women of the party organize themselves in a communist women’s organization. For this very reason, the women of the party have an interest in developing the party as a whole in accordance with the current needs of the class struggle. These needs currently include building a proletarian women’s movement, creating women communist cadres and developing and leading the struggle for women’s revolution both internally and externally. It is self-evident that all genders have a duty to participate in the realization of these tasks. And yet it is above all women who must lead the struggle for their own liberation, which is why the leadership in this area must also lie with the women of the party, with the communist women’s organization. It takes the lead in the struggle for the women’s revolution and thus fulfills a concrete need of the class struggle. This means that the development of the women’s organization and the development of communist women cadres is in the interests of the organization as a whole. Every qualitative development of the women’s organization is a success for the whole party.

The more highly developed the women’s organization is, the better this will lead to the most consistent representatives of the women’s revolution taking an active, leading role everywhere in the party and thus ensuring that the struggle against patriarchy is already firmly anchored in the structure.

The internal organizational Independence of the Women’s Organization as Part of the Party

When asking ourselves the question of the internal organizational autonomy of a women’s organization, concrete answers must be developed primarily through practice. We will therefore attempt at this point to explain what is meant by this autonomy. To this end, it makes sense to first distinguish this from the concept of independence, which we use, for example, in the context of a communist youth organization.

A communist youth organization is ideologically bound to the overall organization, but organizationally independent. This cannot apply to the communist women’s organization, which is why it would be wrong to speak of the development towards independence of the women’s organization in this sense. Making the communist women’s organization independent in any organizational respect makes little sense, if only because the women of the women’s organization are also women of the party. The points of overlap between the two areas are so great that this alone makes it necessary in many respects to make decisions in close coordination with the party. At the same time, however, the reverse is also true: there are areas in which the women’s organization must have the right to make decisions on its own. This right, in turn, arises from the purpose of the communist women’s organization: to lead the women’s revolution.

Put simply, this means that the communist women’s organization must make decisions that fall directly within its area of work autonomously. Of course this right must also apply to dealing with patriarchal misconduct and violence. This, in turn, requires an autonomous women’s leadership that centralizes the work of the individual organs of the women’s organization and leads it in a common direction. In contrast to the independence of the youth organization, the decisions of the women’s organization are binding for the entire party and all members are obliged to abide by them and defend the decisions externally in the interests of organizational discipline.

The Women’s Organization and LGBTI+ Work

The oppression of women and their function in the social production process makes it necessary for capital to maintain the binary role models and the bourgeois nuclear family in which these are reproduced and realized. The consequence of this is that no function is designated for genders outside of this and they therefore belong to the particularly oppressed sections of our class, which are subject to especially severe attacks and violence and whose right to self-determination is one of the most severely curtailed. Since the oppression of transgender and intersex people in particular results from the oppression of women, it is also women who form the revolutionary subject in the struggle for the women’s revolution, which ultimately means the liberation of all genders. The more victorious women are in their struggle, the closer we come to the goal of the liberation of all genders. However, our transgender and intersex class siblings are not simply a passive appendage of the women’s revolution, on the contrary. Since they also suffer heavily under patriarchy, they must take their place in the front ranks of the struggle against it and be an active part of the women’s revolution. The task of a communist women’s organization is to pay special attention to all transgender and intersex comrades. Here, too, the principle of not treating differing circumstances equally applies and therefore special efforts must be made to develop trans and intersex cadres. Under the leadership of the women’s organization itself, they must be put in a position to lead the fight against their oppression.

The Tasks of a Communist Women’s Organization in the Women’s Revolution

Developing Cadres

The development of communist cadres is one of the most central tasks and challenges in building the party in imperialist Germany today. Just as it is the party that must place a special focus on this task, it is also the communist women’s organization that must make a special effort to develop women. We have already explained several times that trained women cadres are needed to lead the women’s revolution.

If the women’s organization is to be a place of cadre development, this means that the women of the organization must be enabled to fulfill their responsibilities in party building across the board. At the same time, of course, this does not mean that only the women of the organization are responsible for the development of other women. The development of women cadres is and remains the responsibility of all. However, the women’s organization ensures that this actually happens and, if necessary, intervenes in the development plans for female cadres. It is necessary to pay particular attention to the development of women cadres, as far too often bourgeois and patriarchal influences lead to a false assessment of women, which means that they are undermined or underestimated, but sometimes also overestimated and consequently not properly trained. At the same time, women face greater hurdles in political work due to their socialization, which require all the more effort to overcome. At this point, one could also say that women must ultimately undergo a much faster development in order to compensate for their disadvantage, i.e. their difficult starting conditions. However, this requires a targeted focus on precisely this development under more difficult conditions.

The Fight against Patriarchal Violence

Even if this is not or should not be the central aspect of communist women’s work, it is still part of it: the fight against patriarchal violence, working with both victims and perpetrators, the professional, political handling of all forms of patriarchal misconduct. Due to gender socialization, men always tend to be conciliatory, both with their own patriarchal characteristics and with other men in relation to their patriarchal behaviour, including patriarchal offences/crimes/acts. For this reason alone, the authority to deal with patriarchal violence must lie exclusively with the women’s organization. However, this alone is no guarantee for error-free work, both in dealing with those affected and in dealing with the accused and perpetrators, as women are also not free from bourgeois patriarchal thinking, feeling and acting. The fight against patriarchal violence therefore requires above all a constant development and examination of one’s own work, binding guidelines and generalized procedures in order to guarantee the highest possible standard in this work.

Bringing the Women’s Perspectives into all Areas of Work – What does this actually mean?

Much has already been said about the need for an autonomous women’s organization. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized once again at this point that this form of organization arises from gender relations alone and their division into oppressors and oppressed. The objective interest in overcoming patriarchy lies with the oppressed and only they themselves can represent their perspective at all levels of the organization and ensure that the organization acts in the spirit of the women’s revolution.

So when we speak of the need to bring the women’s perspective into all areas of work, we mean above all that the point of view of women as the oppressed gender must be heard in all areas of the organization. Ultimately, however, this does not only apply to the struggle within the party. Carrying the women’s point of view into all areas of work also means incorporating the line of the women’s revolution into every class struggle and starting today to push back patriarchal thinking, feeling and action within our class.

Developing a revolutionary Culture among Women

Just as bourgeois behaviors are reproduced everywhere in the party and influence the work, the same is true for women in their interactions with each other. Relationships between women more often resemble bourgeois friendships with a greater need for emotional exchange, which is more difficult to politicize. It is a problem that women among themselves often fall back into the roles and behaviors that are socially ascribed to them and which we should actually be fighting against, in which they ultimately depoliticize each other, meeting primarily as women and not as revolutionaries.

The reason for this is that women – although these characteristics hinder them – are so used to this that they also feel comfortable with bourgeois behavior, which we in fact reject politically. It is much more difficult to spark lively political, theoretical discussions among women, simply because we have not learned otherwise. We have not learned that we can also create bonds with each other through this.

But that is what unites us. We communists are united by the class struggle, the struggle for socialism, the struggle for the women’s revolution. Accordingly, we must meet as cadres and revolutionaries, not only in the official framework, but in everyday interaction. Especially when we realize that we have to fight against particular hurdles in our development, that we have to take faster and bigger steps in our development, then above all we have to create a political, revolutionary culture among ourselves that makes this possible. A culture in which we lead the way as communist women’s role models, setting an example to the women around us that is different from what they associate with their own gender. A communist women’s organization therefore also has the task of actively confronting the bourgeois notions of female friendships with the image of politically fighting and developing comrades. With the results of the first women’s conference, we will approach the tasks ahead of us with greater strength and unity:

Women onward to party construction!

1These discussions and the aim of holding the first women’s conference were announced in the publication of the 4th Congress of Communist Construction.