Feminist Fightback hosts AK-Feminismus [a feminist group from Berlin]

Feminist Fightback will be hosting AK-Feminismus, a feminist group from Berlin, from 29th March-4th April, following the visit of a group of us to Berlin earlier this year. More info on the group is at the bottom of this email.

While they are here, we are hoping that they can meet lots of other anti-capitalist feminist groups and individuals to allow them to get a bit of an idea of what people in London are working on at the moment and to discuss some points of intersection.

[callout title=Sylvia Pankhurst Radical History Walk, Saturday 31st March] Join Feminist Fightback on Saturday 31st March for an East London ramble on the trail of Sylvia Pankhurst and the radical women of East London 1913-18.
Find out how they resisted arrest, kept the police out of their neighbourhood with the infamous ‘saturday nights’, and organised collective nurseries and cost price restaurants to liberate themselves from the double burden of housework and waged work.
Meet 3.30pm @ Bow Road Tube Station – moving off at 3.45pm
Welcome to all genders and none. For more info call Alice on 07976 274516. [/callout]

[callout title=Public Meeting, 2nd April] A meeting to share political ideas and experiences between feminists and other activists from Berlin and London. AK-Feminismus will be presenting some of their current work on the question of exploitation, exploring the development of a concept of exploitation that incorporates domestic/ reproductive labour as well as productive labour, and what this means for political action. Groups and individuals in London will also be able to talk about their own political work. Issues that emerge from this exchange will be drawn out for group discussion.

7pm @ The Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH  (almost opposite Liverpool Street station – map at www.bishopsgate.org.uk/content/966/Visit-Us). For more info call Laura on 07890 209479.[/callout]

About AK-Feminismus…

“We are a work group of the naturfreundejugend berlin. since our first meeting 2008 we have discussed theories and political strategies that link feminist and queer issues and struggles with critics of capitalism and related struggles. Starting from Marx, Engels and some of the first marxist feminists like Clara Zetkin, we have taken a closer look to later feminist movements and theories that followed a materialistic approach. For instance we discussed feminist struggles and demands during the 70s in Germany which focused on reproductive labour and ‘housework’ (Hausarbeit). We discussed and questioned their demand for paid housework and their attempts to find other definitions of Marx’s critical terms as productive and unproductive work, reproduction and exportation in order to politicise domination and exploration at home. This included the idea of unavailing emotional and affective labour of women which is usually invisible and unpaid – also when part of wage labour. In this regard we have been talking about utopian ideas of a better organisation of work/labour and
society. It seemed to us that – from a feminist point of view – socialist utopia and ideas on possible future modes of labour and production have been rather blind to gender issues e.g. by using a very narrow notions of exploitation (exclusively in ‘productive’ labour).

Apart from our discussions on labour in order to intersect feminist, queer and anti-capitalist struggles and debates, we also tried to figure out common epistemological and ontological groundings of marxist and feminist theories and analyses of history, capitalist societies, and gender oppression. We read and discussed some newer materialist and post-postmodernist feminist philosophical writing on epistemological and ontological ideas e.g. from Donna Haraway and Karen Baret.

Looking more to the developments and massive political changes on the labour marked and elsewhere since the 70s, we have tried to consider
changing modes of labour and working conditions for women. Especially regarding a growing sector of care work and a tendency of the inclusion of emotional and affective skills of the work force in the post-fordist era.

Since 2010 we wanted to have a wider attention and started thinking about getting more connected to different feminist and anti-capitalist struggles. We started working on and carrying out a militant research about the question of being constantly overloaded. Especially as women due to expectations and necessities to do additional care and affective work in your workspace as well as in your family, social context and relationships. Apart from the very different living and working conditions and experience of women of with different racial or class backgrounds and identities, we thought that this might be a common experience and as so a good common point of departure for a more unified feminist and anti-capitalist struggle against different
kinds of domination deeply interlinked with systems of sex-gender domination and acted out though different ways of exploitation and power over the labour force of others.

At the moment we are planning a poster campaign, that can be seen as an amplification to the former project and has the goal to unveil reproductive and unpaid work. The campaign aims for the recognition and against the denial of invisible labour which is often done by women. The campaign is also planned as a means to fight together and collective rather than individualising the problem. By pointing outexperience of overload is not a singular or personal one, but results from certain structural problems, division of labour and the capitalist mode of production, which cannot be solved individually but only collectively. We also want to point out that people are affected differently by neoliberal invocations – depending on “gender“, “race”, “class” and other structure categories.”