For all that lesbians and homosexual men have achieved in the last fifteen years, one thing still eludes us: liberation.

Law reform, anti-discrimination legislation, the decline of bigotry are important gains and they have made our lives noticeably easier and much less insecure than they were twenty years ago.

But when gay liberation erupted in Australia in 1970-71 it did not see itself merely as a movement for reforms. It was part of a broader, fighting movement that was out to win real liberation for all the oppressed. We declared that civil rights were not enough. All of society and its institutions had to be changed. We challenged the family, the laws, the church. The very ideas that people had about homosexuality, ideas that had all the force of "simple common sense" were defiantly rejected.

And yet for all the courage that gay activists showed and for all their efforts, the gains we made do not nearly measure up to the goals we set. The reason for this is actually very simple. The oppression of lesbians and gay men is deeply rooted within the capitalist system. And while that system survives, real liberation is simply not possible.

Many people find this contention hard to accept. After all there doesn’t seem to be any obvious connection between capitalism’s main interest - extracting profits from workers’ labour - and the laws and attitudes that make up gay oppression.

One way to get at the connection is to consider the history of the problem.

Whereas women have been oppressed through all of recorded history, this is not true of homosexuality. Indeed the very idea of "a homosexual" is a relatively recent development. While attraction between people of the same sex has always existed, it has been treated differently in different societies. In the ancient world there was no word for "homosexual". It was expected in ancient Greece that most, if not all, men would engage in both homosexual and heterosexual relationships. Each was fitted into its own carefully designed niche in each man’s life.

In the Middle Ages the official view of homosexual acts shifted. In the late thirteenth century benign tolerance turned into murderous repression. But what was being repressed was an act - sodomy - not a type of person. It was only in the nineteenth century Europe that homosexuals began to identify and be identified as a distinct group in society. Homosexuality ceased to be something a person did and become something a person was.

This process was closely linked to another development that was in train at this time - the strengthening of the family. And that in turn was linked to the social crisis created by the rise of industrial capitalism. With industrialisation the age-old structures of rural life were torn apart, as hundreds of thousands of people flocked to find jobs in the cities.

Once there, their poverty and despair gave rise to crime as an everyday part of life. The death toll from industrial accidents and from the effects of miserable working conditions generally, reached such levels that factory owners began to wonder where their next generation of workers was coming from. The state stepped in. Governments passed laws to end the grossest abuses. The ten hour day, limits on child labour, the exclusion of women from work which threatened their ability to bear children, were key elements of the new legislation.

To back up the legal measures, capitalism sought to strengthen the family. It was here that future workers were born and raised and workers could seek refuge from the horrors of the working day and rebuild their physical and emotional strength. In the 1880s laws against sexual activity outside the family - prostitution and homosexuality - were strengthened. The age of consent was raised.

So unlike the oppression of women or migrant workers, gay oppression doesn’t have a directly economic function. Women and some migrants receive lower than average wages and this allows the employers to earn "super profits". Nothing of the sort happens with gays who are neither numerous, nor concentrated enough for it to be possible.

Gay hatred operates essentially to buttress the ideology of the family, including the gender roles associated with it and to keep to a minimum those who choose to live outside family life. It also provides other workers with a handy scapegoat for their frustration. The real problems with their lives can be blamed on those who are outside or on the fringes of system, rather than the system itself.

Generally the most overt repression has been directed against male homosexuals. But lesbians have had to face plenty of hatred and social ostracism as well and at times have been included in overt oppression - for example during the McCarthy period in the USA. This sort of scapegoating need not always be directed at gay. More often it is directed against racial minorities such as Asians or Jews.

Being gay is only particularly relevant to the extent that gays can be the subject of a certain jealous hatred for their "irresponsible freedom" from the problems of family life. Or they may pose a psychological threat to those somewhat twisted by capitalism’s sexual conditioning.

If gay oppression is not fundamental to capitalism, it is still deeply rooted in the system. It is bound up with the maintenance of the family and the oppression of women, which are fundamental. It is theoretically possible that capitalism could have developed without the oppression of gays or that this oppression could go on withering as it has over the past decade or two without threatening the system.

But capitalism is not some simple mechanical device from which bits and pieces can be removed or replaced at will. It is a total system in which all the component parts interact, reinforcing each other. If one bit comes loose, the operation of the whole can be unsettled. That’s why the capitalist class, once so deeply revolutionary, has become deeply conservative.

And even if we could end specifically gay oppression under capitalism, we would still not be free. For lesbians, their oppression as women would remain. For working class gays, exploitation would not one jot less intense.

Liberation cannot be boxed off like that. Only freedom for everyone can liberate any of us. And that means socialism.