CHICAGO, January 21—For the second annual Women’s March, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) again rallied with workers from the region against the sexism perpetuated by the U.S. ruling class. Hundreds of thousands of anti-sexists showed up today to voice their anger against the sexist ideology, violence, and oppression.
Despite many of the marchers’ anger towards Trump and the system, the overall tone of the march was reformist and passive in nature. More voting was the call many marchers were yelling. Also, the overall the majority white crowd is reflective of the racism and sexism of the Democrats that organized it.
These wealthy liberal capitalists and their politicians have historically exploited and left out Black, Latin, Arab, Asian, and indigenous women workers from their “movement,” co-opting many genuine working-class struggles against sexism for their own imperialist and profit-based ends.
Our small but mighty contingent of comrades provoked a different conversation, one that encouraged anti-sexists to “march away from the polls.” We distributed hundreds of CHALLENGEs and close to 1,000 fliers, calling out the entire capitalist system and to the need to completely overthrow it. A comrade got on the bullhorn and gave a revolutionary speech calling out the threat liberals pose to women because they offer them the same future that conservatives do: lower wages, sexual violence, and poor access to resources.
Workers were very receptive to our message, taking CHALLENGE and giving their contact information. This was a good indicator that people are looking for other alternatives, not just ballot boxes and “feel-good” slogans.  
 Phony solutions to a deadly problem
The recent anti-sexist movements in Hollywood and corporate U.S. have inspired many to speak out and take action against sexist oppression, violence, and inequality. But if the end result is just to get someone like Oprah Winfrey to run for president, the first Black woman billionaire—who made money off of an unequal and sexist media industry to begin with— then the efforts of many courageous anti-sexists will be largely wasted. Rich women, Black or otherwise, are no friends of working-class women and men.
To advance a truly anti-sexist mass movement, we need to go beyond liberalism, feminism, and identity politics as usual. Pushing for more women executives and politicians won’t liberate women. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder in struggle with billions of workers from all over the world to understand capitalism’s role in spreading sexism, and build for communist revolution as the true source of justice and liberation for our class.
Capitalism = Sexism
The basis for sexism is class society. Although sexist inequality preceded capitalism by many centuries, it is the global capitalist economic and political system that is responsible for breeding the sexist divisions and wholesale violence against women that we see today. In the U.S. alone, we see that sexist wage differentials against women persist, with Latin women receiving 58 cents on the dollar for white men performing the same work, with Black women at 65 cents for every dollar, and white women at 82 cents for every dollar (Pew Research 7/1/16).
In order to continue paying women less, the capitalist bosses need to constantly push all kinds of sexist ideology and attacks. Women are objectified and degraded in advertisements and “entertainment” media, preteen girls are kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, and people of non-conforming gender identities are vilified and murdered at obscene rates. Women and men are taught to consider each other as rivals and inherently different, with millions of men buying into the false and destructive lie that sexist social relations are for their benefit. All these toxic dehumanizing divisions and more effectively prop up the capitalist system by weakening workers’ collective efforts to unite and fight back.
Communist revolution will crush sexism
For generations, communists and countless working-class leaders using history, theory, and practice have known that none of these sexist divisions are “natural” or “inevitable.” Far beyond just fighting for economic justice, these revolutionaries understood that the most direct and permanent path to political and social equality for all working people has been women and men rejecting sexist divisions and organizing against their common exploiters in the fight for a classless society of communism.
PLP fights to carry on this revolutionary communist tradition. We are organizing women and men workers into a mass international movement and a Red Army to destroy sexism, racism, and inequality at their root: the capitalist system. Don’t vote, revolt! Join PLP!