This charge is more than an insult to women throughout the world and throughout our class who remain doublely or even triplely oppressed by national subjegation, capitalist exploitation, and sexism. It is also utter folly.

Women make up over half of the population of this, and most other, nations, including Ireland. Likewise, women comprise over half of the working class. Accordingly, the question must be posed: how can we speak of a nation that is free, when over half of its populace continues to suffer daily deprivation and oppression because of their gender? What does it mean to claim to have won the liberation of the working class, if most of the members of that class continue to be treated as exploitable comodities?

It means nothing -- it is simply a convenient lie, convenient for some. Far easier for them than challenging the archaic notions handed to them throughout their lives by the capitalist system. They believe themselves unaffected, and so hope to ignore this oppression by asserting their view of its importance arbitrarily and then limiting their fight to those forms of oppression which they perceive as imparing their own quality of life.

They are fools!

The working class can not attain socialism while a large section of the class remain exploited -- this is utter contradiction -- and most of its very essence mean the failure of the struggle. Likewise, the winning of the male citizens of a given nation of freedom from imperialist occupation, but which still permits those men the ability to exploit and abuse the women of the nation, is not a nation that has been liberated. The nation continues to suffer under the yoke of degradation and its children are born to slaves.

The liberation of women is not only a legitimate demand for the female populace, but the ending of the corrosive and oppressive system of sexism is a primary responsiblity of every revolutionary socialist, male or female, who can legitimately bear that title. The liberation of women is only possible by ending sexism, and the ending of sexism cannot help but contribute to the freedom of every woman and man on the planet.

The Irish Republican Socialist Movement has long been proud to have women integrated at the highest levels of both the IRSP and the INLA, and we share that pride. The IRSP has long had the distinction of being among the first and still among the only political parties in Ireland to unfailingly support a woman's right to choose abortion and to have control over her reproductive rights; to champion the right of divorce for all; to defend the civil and human rights of lesbians; to demand the creation of state-funded child care for all working women in Ireland; and the creation of a system of complete equality between the sexes in Ireland and throughout the world. We in the Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America applaud their having usually been in the genuine vanguard of the Irish working class in embracing these demands and concerns.

As we march into a new century, we join with the whole of the IRSM in rededicating ourselves to once and for all ending the oppression of our working class sisters and comrades, and purging the reactionary ideology of sexism which the capitalist system has imposed upon the healthy mental function of both the men and women of our class. And, on this, International Women's Day, we remember with respect and pride the many heroic working class women who have waged the struggle that we continue to carry on, and we salute our class sisters now for continuing to fight on while having to overcome twice the oppression faced by those of us who are male.

We mention in passing the names of Jenny Marx-Longuet, Elenor Marx-Aveling, and Laura Marx-Lafargue, Mary and Lizzie Burns, Rosa Luxemburg, Angelica Balabanov, Alexandra Kollantai, Clara Zetkin, Nora Connolly O'Brien, Lily Kempson, Constance Markiewicz, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Mother Jones, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Miriam Daly, Mary McGlinchey among the many -- most nameless -- who have fought for the liberation of the working class with such dedication and energy. We remember their contribution, and we send greetings of our profound solidarity and our deep respect to revolutionary women throughout Ireland and throughout the world today. It is fitting recognition of International Women's Day to honor those who so often bear the greater portion of the work on their shoulders with quiet dedication and self-less commitment and to acknowledge their courage, their strength, and the inspiration they so often provide.