Decolonise Everything: Marxist-Feminist Resistance Now

From 21 to 23 November 2025, the 6th International Marxist-Feminist Conference took place in Porto, Portugal, bringing together hundreds of feminists, activists, researchers and militants committed to anti-capitalist, decolonial and socialist struggle.

The conference was organised by transform! europe—the affiliated political foundation of the Party of the European Left—together with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Germany), Iratzar Foundation (Basque Country) and Fundacja Naprzód (Poland).

Far from an academic exercise, the conference was a political intervention responding to what the organisers described as “a time characterised by militarism, with the far right and fascism on the rise and gaining power”. Against this backdrop of war, austerity and authoritarianism, the gathering reaffirmed Marxist feminism as a collective project of resistance and transformation.

A clear political horizon

Held under the motto “Decolonise Bodies, Territories and Practices,” the conference set out an unambiguous horizon: feminism must be anti-capitalist, anti-racist, decolonial and ecological, or it risks being absorbed by the very system it claims to oppose. As the conference text stated: “We do not abandon the project of a just life for all – that is why we mobilise to build an anti-capitalist feminist project”. This perspective ran through all plenaries, panels and workshops, rejecting liberal feminism’s fixation on representation and individual success while leaving exploitation and imperialism intact.

Decolonising bodies: beyond moral regulation

The first thematic axis, decolonising bodies, focused on reclaiming bodies as sites of autonomy and struggle against capitalist patriarchy. Participants stressed that bodies are not private entities but terrains shaped by labour exploitation, racialisation, heteronormativity and state violence. The conference framing made this explicit: “Decolonise bodies – reclaim them as self-determined territories by fighting all oppressions that alienate, commodify, and objectify them”.

A key reference point was the work of Frigga Haug, whose contribution warned against reducing violence and domination to individual behaviour or morality. Analysing sexual politics under neoliberalism, Haug argued that gender relations are “not a minor detail” but “fundamental for the relations of production”. Several discussions built on this insight, emphasising that without challenging capitalist organisation of work and social reproduction, feminist demands risk being neutralised by law, media and moral panic.

Decolonising territories: land, war and extraction

The second axis, decolonising territories, addressed the violent spatial organisation of capitalism. From Palestine to Latin America, speakers showed how land, water and housing are systematically reorganised to serve profit, often under the cover of “development,” “security” or “post-conflict” reconstruction. Women—especially Indigenous, Black, migrant and working-class women—are at the forefront of resistance because they experience dispossession most directly.

One workshop on Palestine stressed collective resilience under occupation, while other panels connected extractivism, militarism and climate destruction. As one contribution put it, capitalism today operates through “violent occupation, appropriation, and expropriation, as well as processes of dehumanisation and death”. Feminist anti-militarism emerged as a shared position: there can be no feminist politics aligned with war, borders or imperial alliances.

Decolonising practices: feminism as a space of the common

The third axis, decolonising practices, challenged the left itself. The conference consciously rejected narrow academic formats, welcoming papers alongside workshops, performances, conversation circles, artivism and collective reflection. This was rooted in a materialist understanding that knowledge is produced in struggle, not only in institutions.

Several plenary interventions directly confronted the rise of reactionary “anti-gender” movements and their disturbing convergence with strands of liberal feminism. João Manuel de Oliveira warned that: “We cannot allow these fascist modes of organising gender… to contaminate feminism, particularly in its socialist and progressive forms”. Feminism, participants insisted, cannot be built on exclusion. Women were consistently defined not as a biological essence but as a social class constituted through relations of exploitation and oppression. As de Oliveira stated clearly: “Feminism is a space of the common”.

This commitment translated into explicit solidarity with trans women and non-binary people, as well as with women living under occupation and racialised state violence.

Building internationalist hope

Since its first edition in Berlin in 2015, the International Marxist-Feminist Conference has functioned as a space for rebuilding internationalist feminist politics. Porto 2025 continued this trajectory, strengthening networks at a moment when capitalism offers only permanent crisis, authoritarian governance and greenwashed destruction.

What emerged most powerfully was a refusal of resignation. As the organisers concluded, the aim was “to weave networks of solidarity and restore hope by taking and claiming the floor”. Not a naïve hope, but one rooted in organisation, analysis and collective struggle.

In Porto, Marxist feminism was not presented as a theory of the past, but as a necessary weapon for the present. The task ahead remains immense—but the message from the conference was clear: another world will only be built through collective, anti-capitalist, decolonial feminist struggle.

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