The following is the text of an anarcha-feminist manifesto from around
1971, reprinted in a pamphlet called Quiet Rumours:
Blood Of The Flower: An Anarchist-Feminist Statement
We are an independent collective of women who feel that anarchism is the
logically consistent expression of feminism.
We believe that each woman is the only legitimate articulator of her own
oppression. Any woman, regardless of previous political involvement knows
only too intimately her own oppression, and hence, can and must define what
form her liberation will take.
Why are many women sick and tired of 'movements'? Our answer is that the
fault lies with the nature of movements, not with the individual women.
Political movements, as we have known them, have separated our political
activities from our personal dreams of liberation, until either we are made
to abandon our dreams as impossible or we are forced to drop out of the
movement because we hold steadfastly to our dreams. As true anarchists and
as true feminists, we say dare to dream the impossible, and never settle
for less than total translation of the impossible into reality.
There have been two principle forms of action in the women's liberation
movement. One has been the small, local, volitionally organised
consciousness-raising group, which at best has been a very meaningful mode
of dealing with oppression from a personal level and, at worst, never
evolved beyond the level of a therapy group.
The other principle mode of participation has been large, bureaucratised
groups which have focused their activities along specific policy lines,
taking great pains to translate women's oppression into concrete,
single-issue programmes. Women in this type of group often have been
involved in formal leftist politics for some time, but could not stomach
the sexism within other leftist groups. However, after reacting against the
above-mentioned attitude of leftist males, many women with formal political
orientations could not accept the validity of what they felt were the
'therapy groups' of their suburban sisters; yet they themselves still
remained within the realm of male-originated Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist,
Maoist rhetoric, and continued to use forms of political organisation
employed by the male leftist groups they were reacting against. The elitism
and centralisation of the old male left thereby has found, and already
poisoned parts of the women's movement with the attitude that political
sophistication must mean 'building' a movement around single issue
programmes, thereby implying that 'we must be patient until the masses'
consciousness is raised to our level.' How condescending to assume that an
oppressed person must be told that she is oppressed! How condescending to
assume that her consciousness will grow only by plodding along, from
single-issue to next single issue.
In the past decade or more, women of the left were consistently intimidated
out of fighting for our own liberation, avoiding the obvious fact that all
women are an oppressed group. We are so numerous and dispersed that we have
identified ourselves erroneously as members of particular classes on the
basis of the class of 'our men', our fathers or our husbands. So women of
the left regarding ourselves as middle-class more than oppressed women,
have been led to neglect engaging in our own struggle as our primary
struggle. Instead, we have dedicated ourselves to fight on behalf of other
oppressed peoples, thus alienating ourselves from our own plight. Many say
that this attitude no longer exists in the women's movement, that it
originated only from the guilt trip of the white middle class male, but
even today women in autonomous women's movements speak of the need to
organise working class women, without concentrating on the need to organise
ourselves - as if we were already beyond that level. This does not mean (if
we insist first and foremost on freeing ourselves) that we love our
oppressed sisters any the less; on the contrary, we feel that the best way
for us to be true to all liberation struggles is to accept and deal
directly with our own oppression.
Why Anarchism?
We do not believe that rejection of Marxist-Leninist analysis and strategy
is by definition political naiveté. We do not believe it is politically
naive to maintain the attitude that even a 'democratically centralised'
group could be considered the 'vanguard' spokeswoman for us. The nature of
groups concerned with 'building' movements is: 1) to water down the 'more
extreme' dreams into 'realistic' demands, and 2) to eventually become an
organ of tyranny itself. No thanks!
There is another entire radical tradition which has run counter to
Marxist-Leninist theory and practice through all of modern radical history
- from Bakunin to Kropotkin to Sophie Perovskaya to Emma Goldman to Errico
Malatesta to Murray Bookchin - and that is Anarchism. It is a tradition
less familiar to most radicals because it has consistently been distorted
and misrepresented by the more highly organised State organisations and
Marxist-Leninist organisations.
Anarchism is not synonymous with irresponsibility and chaos. Indeed, it
offers meaningful alternatives to the out-dated organisational and
policy-making practices of the rest of the left. The basic anarchist form
of organisation is a small group, volitionary organised and maintained,
which must work toward defining the oppression of its members and what form
their struggle for liberation must take.
Organising women, in the New Left and Marxist left, is viewed as amassing
troops for the Revolution But we affirm that each woman joining in struggle
is the Revolution. WE ARE THE REVOLUTION!
We must learn to act on impulse, to abandon the restrictions on behaviour
that society has taught us to place on ourselves. The 'movement' has been,
for most of us, a thing removed from ourselves. We must no longer think of
ourselves as members of a movement, but as individual revolutionaries,
co-operating. Two, three, five or ten such individual revolutionaries who
know and trust each other intimately can carry out revolutionary acts and
make our own policy. As members of a leaderless affinity group, each member
participates on an equal level of power, thus negating the hierarchical
function of power. DOWN WITH ALL BOSSES! Then we will not be lost in a
movement where leadership determines for us the path the movement will take
- we are our own movement, we determine our own movement's direction. We
have refused to allow ourselves to be directed, spoken for, and eventually
cooled off.
We do not believe, as some now affirm, that the splintering of the Women's
Movement means the end to all of our revolutionary effectiveness. No! The
spirit of the women is just too large to be guided and manipulated by 'a
movement'. Small groups, acting on their own and deciding upon their own
actions, are the logical expression of revolutionary women. This, of
course, does not preclude various groups working together on various
projects or conferences.
To these ends, and because we do not wish to he out of touch with other
women, we have organised as an autonomous collective within the Women's
Centre in Cambridge, Mass. The Women's Centre functions as a federation;
that is, not as a policy-making group, but as a centre for various women's
groups to meet. We will also continue to write statements like this one as
we feel moved to. We would really like to hear from all and sundry!
ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION! Red Rosia and Black Maria Black Rose
Anarcho-Feminists
A Note On The Text
Blood of the Flower was written by Red Rosia and Black Maria of Black Rose
Anarcho-Feminists, who in 1971 could be reached c/o The Women's Centre, 46
Pleasant Street, Cambridge Mass.
It first appeared in Siren - A Journal of Anarcho-Feminism Vol 1 No 1 1971
(now defunct), published in Chicago.
It was next published as a pamphlet by the Seattle section of the Social
Revolutionary Anarchist Federation and the Revolutionary Anarchist Print
Fund, c/o 4736 University Way NE, Seattle, Wn 98105.
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/01/07/5148415