En Passant

So at this point in history, when feminism has been under sustained attack for the last 40 odd years with no end in sight, the last thing we should feel compelled to do is attack feminism. On the contrary, we need to defend feminism on principle, as a defense of women’s liberation and opposition to sexism. What is the definition of feminism? The advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social and economic equality to men.

So I would argue that today, our emphasis should be more in keeping with that of the theory and practice of the Bolsheviks, in which we do not attempt to minimize the degree of oppression faced by women–or any other oppressed group–inside the working class, but rather to make a serious effort on every front to combat it.

The Wizard of Oz is a film about politics, celebrating liberation. It is a reworking for the 1930s of L Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900. In Baum’s children’s book, the Tin Man represents the working class, the Scarecrow the small farmer, the Cowardly Lion the populist leader, William Jennings Bryan, the Wicked Witch is big business and the Wizard himself is the US government. In the novel, Dorothy has silver shoes, the populist panacea, but in the film, her shoes are red. One of the film’s anthems, “Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead”, was to be sung on picket lines.