The Women’s March, happening in a number of cities on January 19, 2019, began in 2017 when Donald Trump became President. It was in large part a response to his sexist behavior toward women, as well as the serious threats to women’s access to abortion. Several million women and men marched in the U.S. and around the world.
 The demands included reproductive rights, criminal justice reform, defense of the environment and supporting the rights of immigrants, Muslims, gay and transgender people, and the disabled. The march was consciously intended to prop up the Democratic Party, and many of its slogans implied that workers would have been better off had Hillary Clinton been elected. None of the leaders and few of the marchers connected the problems of racism and sexism to capitalism.
Electing Democrats, however, does nothing to address the crises of capitalism: economic disarray and inequality, the threat of climate change caused by the profitable burning of fossil fuels, and imperialist wars that threaten to become world wars. Women are often the biggest victims of these depredations, with tens of millions working in low-wage factories from Bangladesh to China to the U.S., and they have terribly suffered from imperialist wars in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and many other countries. Billions of women and men are exploited and oppressed by capitalism, which is why workers of all genders, nations and ethnicities should unite to fight for a society run by and for ourselves – communism. That will require a revolution, and to accomplish that we must stick together and avoid the false promises of liberal reformers, even if well-intentioned.
This year’s March will push the same limited Democratic Party-endorsed set of reforms, and has also been marred by accusations of anti-Semitism against the leaders. Two of the four leaders have had some relationship with Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam(NOI), who has a long history of  perpetuationg racist and anti-Semitic, and anti- gay rhetoric. In February, at the NOI’s annual Saviour’s Day event, Farrakhan falsely accused Jewish people of being “the mother and father of apartheid” and offered his unique conspiracy theory that they had used marijuana to chemically induce homosexuality in Black men.
The NOI leader has repeatedly blamed racist conditions on bad behavior by Black fathers or providers, rather than on the ravages of racism.  This was the theme of his famous Million Man March of 1995. Farrakhan has long been a right-winger, a proponent of Black capitalism and an enemy of Malcolm X, who he said was “worthy of death.” When Malcolm X was assassinated by members of NOI in 1965 when he broke with Elijah Muhammed and began to advocate multi-racial unity, Malcolm’s family accused Farrakhan of ordering the killing.One of the leaders of the Women’s march, Tamika Mallory, is a businesswomen and Democratic Party operative. She is close to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and is the national director of the National Action Network, led by Hillary Clinton supporter and Democratic Party activist Al Sharpton. Mallory attended the February NOI event and had nothing but praise for Farrakhan.
Facing criticism, Mallory denied she supported anti-Semitism. Another leader of the Women’s march, Linda Sarsour, has often spoken out against anti-Semitism while being an active supporter of Palestinian rights. Sarsour raised money to support the victims of anti-Semitic attacks, especially after the recent massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Most of the people accusing her of anti-Semitism are doing so because Sarsour opposes the brutal apartheid policies of Israel. Rather than being concerned about fighting racism, her detractors defend Israel’s mistreatment and murder of Palestinians. So bitter is this dispute that the Women’s March has been cancelled in Chicago and several other locations, and two competing marches are scheduled in NYC.
Rather than calling for multiracial unity against a racist and sexist system perpetuated by the two big capitalist parties in the U.S., the leaders allow Democratic Party spokespeople a platform (presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren was a featured speaker for two years in a row).  The Guiding Vision statement of the Women’s March calls for some worthwhile reforms:“accountability and justice for police brutality and ending racial profiling, [dismantling] the gender and racial inequities within the criminal justice system,… an economy powered by transparency, accountability, security and equity,… and equal pay for equal work.”
They also called for an end to “aggression caused by the war economy and the concentration of power in the hands of a wealthy elite who use political, social, and economic systems to safeguard and expand their power.”
However, the only means discussed to accomplish these goals are a new Constitutional amendment, adherence to UN Human Rights Declarations and maintaining the right to unionize. Change, presumably, will come by electing Democrats. Such demands are pipedreams under capitalism. While some policies can conceal or shift the racist and sexist effects of capitalism, the system that produces these inequalities goes unchallenged.
Rather than separatist struggles, in which each oppressed group fights for its own rights under capitalism, we need a unified and fighting working class. Despite an apparatus for voting which allows for a periodic (and often manipulated) choice between various members of the ruling class, neither political party offers anything other than minor tinkering with a capitalist system that cares only about profits, and is in deep crisis and threatens to take us all down through war, depression and the destruction of the environment. It has got to go.