Intersectionality vs. Marxism

[Lobotomy]

I've only just learned about intersectionality, and I've only read so much as the wikipedia page basically. I'm interested to know what the devoted Marxists of the forum think about intersectionality. Also, if there are any users here who think that intersectionality theory is superior to Marxism in terms of understanding different forms of oppression I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.

[Coggeh]

If only multinationals and the bourgeois class would "check there privilege"= automatic socialism. intersectionality is an understandable position of the disenfranchised young communuties where no left presents a genuine alternative. However the idea of "degrees of oppression" whilst based in reality in terms of experience have no bearing in terms of who is a revolutionary and who is not. Example: Thatcher vs Connolly. Who better represents women's rights in that scenario?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

It's a necessary concept when some on the Left seem to think class is the only oppression.

[Kamaradas]

Marxism-Leninism isn't about 'oppression' by itself, but about a specific kind of society and oppression.

You can't turn against it just on the basis of semantics over the word 'oppression,' which is opening up a can of worms over all kinds of things which can be labelled 'oppressive' but aren't opposed in the same way. That would be trying to change a part of Marxism without changing what led to its conclusions, or challenging them. Marxism doesn't admit for such things to have their own history which is just as essential as the economic.

[ckaihatsu]

I'll proffer the following framework, which depicts a formulation of 'social magnitude' growing larger upwards on a vertical axis.

Marxism / Marxists note that class *isn't* comparable to bourgeois-strategic types of social oppression, like racism, sexism, etc. -- no "classism" -- since class is the *fundamental* social divide and could be thought-of as a *combination* of economic-exploitation and social-oppression (my formulation).

So on this framework the 'politics' superstructure and 'logistics' base grind-on to influence individuals at smaller scales, as with 'lifestyle'.


History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

http://s6.postimg.org/44rloql0x/160309_History_Macro_Micro_politics_logistic.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/r686uhkod/full/)

[Radical Atom]

It's a necessary concept when some on the Left seem to think class is the only oppression.
For pseudo-left and liberal ideologues maybe.
Buying into post-modern identitarian individualist liberal ideology will only delegitimize (and rightly so) the left even more.
You will find no actual Marxist even considering to regard "class as the only oppression". I am going to assume this is a typo since class is not "an oppression" because oppression is irreducible to a single "class" they are meaningless by themselves, classes only exist or mean something in relation to other classes. A bourgeois without a proletarian cannot exist and a proletarian without a bourgeoisie ceases to be a proletarian (an outcome which we desire). I mean that's the fucking point of communism: the proletarian class succeeds to abolish itself (and its current circumstances) by overthrowing the capitalist order. A proletarian is not oppressed by the fact of being "a proletarian", they are oppressed because, among other things, the bourgeois class extracts the surplus-value of their labor; I doubt medieval nobility felt much oppressed by "their class".
The whole point is not to paint our predicament in a prettier and bigger palette colors or not even turning it upside down. The true revolutionary course is to supersede the existing order, transcend it. Communists do not dabble in frivolous individualism and life-stylism, communists see themselves as universal subjects. Not individuals whose personal experiences must define the world they live in.

What do these people who are so keen to defend this oh so innovative intersectionality against "dogmatic" "class reductionist" Marxists think is the source of other "oppressions" like racism and sexism? "Ignorance (tm)"? "Intolerance (r)"? Even legitimate concepts like patriarchy are turned into meaningless abstractions by these petty ideologues.
Also how is say, sexism, not related to labor and class?
The working-class family is the capitalist system’s economic unit, an integral part of the reproduction of capitalist relations. As a necessary component of the wage form of exploitation, capitalism imposes a sexual division of labor. Women are obliged to fulfill the wife/mother role in order to ensure the system a steady supply of labor power.
Same goes for racism, what do you think? That europeans one day woke up deciding to hate "them n*ggers" or that, slavery being a very important source of wealth since it guaranteed enormous amounts of immensely cheap labor, an ideological dehumanization and a paternalistic view of non-whites was a logical step to take to further justify its existence. At one point the Irish were considered an inferior race, might have something to do with being subjugated by the British Empire at the time.
Capitalism is a mode of production that creates a myriad of relations, be it class, gender or race. Of course they are related to each other and are to be understood in the wider context of the capitalist mode of production! We live in a capitalist totality, of course its effects will permeate through every nook and cranny of our society!
That's what Marxists have been saying for more than a fucking century!

Excuse me if I seem a little harsh, I'm not trying to lash out at you personally. I just felt it was a good opportunity to make it clear that yes, there are pseudo-commies (identity consumers more like) out there that have no grasp of actual leftist politics, but fighting that with un-leftist and anti-radical politics (I don't consider liberals left) won't help solve the problem.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The whole point is not to paint our predicament in a prettier and bigger palette colors or not even turning it upside down. The true revolutionary course is to supersede the existing order, transcend it. Communists do not dabble in frivolous individualism and life-stylism, communists see themselves as universal subjects. Not individuals whose personal experiences must define the world they live in.
The experiences of women, people of color, LGBT people, etc., are hardly "frivolous individualism" or "life-stylism", and yet the oppression of such people had quite often been mirrored in revolutionary parties, movements, governments, etc., largely because they only saw class as important or they saw those issues as distractions or they saw those issues as inherently counter-revolutionary.

[Fellow_Human]

There is no contradiction between Marxism and intersectionality.

It just so happens that the engine of history is class struggle. That does not belittle other forms of oppression.

The consensus on the left has been that being against oppression means being against all forms of oppression.

Social issues are interrelated, and therefore loose coalitions of solidarity can be maintained, between groups that might otherwise have little in common.

By far the most pervasive and stable coalitional dichotomy is that of power -- between those who have it and those who don't. Class struggle and other struggles are in agreement. Often, however, the bourgeoisie succeed in exploiting these other identities to divert attention from the class struggle. Thus, for example, the billionaire Trump has many working-class followers, yet it's not just any working class, but the White, male, mature-aged segments thereof.

Karl Marx certainly did account for that sort of "intersectionality," when he spoke, for example, of bourgeois nationalism, and about how "Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex."

Partly a Marxist movement, the American New Left of the 1960s was very much involved in the Civil Rights Movement, for Blacks, gays, etc.

Unfortunately, there are those who portray all identity politics as a distraction from class politics. Far-left circles have had a long history of using that excuse. "Class comes first, sweetie" is practically a meme. That's why the Mujeres Libres collective was established in pre-WWII Spain.

[(A)]

I agree with my Fellow_Human.

They dont contradict and can co exists. I am not talking with how/if people view Intersectionality as a replacement for Marxist theory but specifically as a way of examining the indepth working in interconnected discrimination caused class conflict between the ruling class and the working class.

[Fellow_Human]

What do these people who are so keen to defend this oh so innovative intersectionality against "dogmatic" "class reductionist" Marxists think is the source of other "oppressions" like racism and sexism? "Ignorance (tm)"? "Intolerance (r)"? Even legitimate concepts like patriarchy are turned into meaningless abstractions by these petty ideologues.
[. . .]
Capitalism is a mode of production that creates a myriad of relations, be it class, gender or race. Of course they are related to each other and are to be understood in the wider context of the capitalist mode of production!

Not just the capitalist mode of production but also all previous modes, beginning with the slave societies of the Bronze Age. Rather than denying that those forms of oppression began with class oppression, I only deny that they will stop when class oppression does. Six thousand years of it have cemented in the superstructure a model that necessitates thorough re-education and restructuring, even once the means of production are owned by the workers themselves. We had better start now.

[Radical Atom]

The experiences of women, people of color, LGBT people, etc., are hardly "frivolous individualism" or "life-stylism", , [/COLOR]
Oh, for fuck sake, you are arguing against a straw man and putting words on people's mouths, please have the decency to be respectful to the time I've put out on my post and to try to understand what is being conveyed instead presuposing with assumptions and prejudice. It's as if you started reading, you got to this paragraph, and forgot about everything else I've said. You know nothing about me or what I've been through so excuse me if I find your misguided assumptions pretty fucking insulting. Read my post again without presuposing anything, reading only what I am saying and you'll see we are not disagreeing as much as you think.

Yes, I've met that kind of scum, I know what you are talking about. My attacks to these politics are diametrically opposed to theirs. No one in this thread said that the struggle of women, black people, LGBt et al are frivolous and individualist. In fact, yours truly has taken a position of the contrary being the case! Abolishing capitalism means abolishing exploitation of labor, abolishing sexual classes, abolishing gender, abolishing race, abolishing identity BUT also vice versa, there is no abolishing exploitation of labor, etc. without abolishing the mode of production that necessitates and reproduces those conditions: Capitalism. It is implicit in our struggle! The only ones that need to be told that are the ones who see "da abolishment of capitalizm" as an abstraction.

What is frivolous and individualist is the way they perceive and pretend to tackle these very complex issues:
In this day and age you can put any quality of a person behind an -ism and thanks to these scum it constitutes a legitimate oppressed group, how can otherwise be justified the existence of such hysterical buzzwords such as "ageism" or "speciesism"? (Are we to say now that children are on the same level as adults?! Or that animals are on the same level that humans?!) This shit only serves to de-sensitize and trivialize the actual meaning of oppression, and the actual consequences and ramifications of racism and sexism. How is not individualist and life-stylist this reification of identity to the point even fat people claim to be oppressed? Fucking hashtivist "culture".

Look at the language you use, you said "experiences of" instead of, say, struggle or oppression or subjugation: don't you see how individualist and subjectivist this outlook is? Well, what about the "experiences" of women MRAs, of Milo Yannopoulos, of Benjamin Netanyahu or David Horowitz?

What about the completely repulsive and abject euphemistic nightmare and language policing that exists today? (And again, just in case you want to misrepresent what I'm saying, no, I'm not talking being able to call women b***hes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc

In Spain "inválido"(invalid) or "minusválido" (minusvalid, as in less valid) is more acceptable than "tullido" (cripple): the actual euphemism makes it sound worse than the word specifically created to designate a person with physical disabilities! This soft language is nothing but a grotesque evasion of reality: shellshock became battle fatigue; people are not assassinated anymore, they are neutralized; there is no more torture, "only" enhanced interrogation techniques.
Maybe if we still called cripples "cripples" they'd gotten more attention than a few reserved parking spots and massive pathological pity.
Simple, honest, direct language is the enemy of liberal ideologues, not only because it reflects a world they don't us to see but also they don't want to see from their ivory towers (Confronting it politically and meaningfully would mean confronting themselves).But also because soft language, in opposition to direct language, effectively creates a symbolic distance between subjects, an "otherness", perpetuating a separation instead of fighting it with and for universal solidarity.
Which takes us to yet another disgraceful problem in pseudo-left intersectionality apologist circles: the notion that speaking is a sign of a persons particular power over others, especially when it comes to people who happen to pertain to a certain minority. Do you realise how patronising it is to regard women, blacks, homosexuals... as some sort of pathetic and fragile subject that cannot speak for and defend itself when confronted by a someone who happens to be in the lower strata of the oppression olympics scale? Same goes for the opposite, that because someone belongs to a particular identity what they say must be elevated. Particular experiences (as you say) must translate into something with substance, otherwise it's a meaningless invoking of ones identity.

and yet the oppression of such people had quite often been mirrored in revolutionary parties, movements, governments, etc.

These "revolutionary" parties, movements, governments, etc. have all overseen capitalist states with commodity production, invaded other nations on flimsy grounds, have shaken hands with Kissinger, declared the cold war USA preferable to cold war USSR, called an inter-imperialist war that killed millions of soviet men and women "patriotic", created hereditary rule in their states and more. I don't think they are neither a good nor the only example of actual Marxism.

Actual revolutionaries (be it movements, parties, people) on the other hand, built one of the most far-reaching attempts to change women's "role" in society, decriminalized homosexuality for the first time in modern history, promoted international solidarity between all workers of the world regardless of nationality, sex and race and opposed, denounced and confronted from the very start racism, such as the pogroms against Jews in Russia.
One of the greatest legacies of american revolutionaries is that of the Black Panther Party which was (spoiler alert) a class conscious movement that opposed race altogether instead of championing it like the reactionaries of the NoI. It was so effective that the U.S. government had to resort to one of the most virulent and violent campaigns against its own citizens in recent memory.

That is not to deny, however, that backward elements still existed to varying degrees in different contexts, they are to be combated. But for every brocialist there is a Marxist feminist, for every "patriotic" communist there is an internationalist.


largely because they only saw class as important or they saw those issues as distractions or they saw those issues as inherently counter-revolutionary.

Soooo... just like now, there are idiots who can't grasp left wing politics but identify with them nonetheless, and then make up contrived excuses and rhetoric to justify their reactionary views. So what? Again, just because you decide to only fixate yourself on those (obviously negative and undesirable) examples doesn't mean they were the only ones. The whole, point once again, is that you don't fight reactionaries with reactionary politics.
Our only real disagreement is with intersectionality, I see it as something that says absolutely nothing new because it's a liberal vulgarization of what marxists have been saying since forever at best and another conduit for postmodernism, identity politics and other examples of anti-radicalism at worst.

For those who foolishly think Marxism concerns itself only with "class":

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/movement/dora-eleanor.htm (https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/movement/dora-eleanor.htm)
Woman and Socialism (1879): https://www.marxists.org/archive/bebel/1879/woman-socialism/index.htm?utm_source=lasindias.info
On Homosexuality and the Penal Code (1898): https://www.marxists.org/archive/bebel/1898/01/13.htm
Look up Eleanor Marx, Alexandra Kollontai, Clara Only in conjunction with the proletarian woman Socialism will be victorious Zetkin, Dora Montefiore, and countless more for fucks sake.
The International Women's Day used to be the International Working Women's Day as a solely Socialist celebration!


Not just the capitalist mode of production but also all previous modes, beginning with the slave societies of the Bronze Age. Rather than denying that those forms of oppression began with class oppression, I only deny that they will stop when class oppression does. Six thousand years of it have cemented in the superstructure a model that necessitates thorough re-education and restructuring, even once the means of production are owned by the workers themselves.But here you fall into the ideological trap of regarding present forms of oppression as some sort of transhistorical ossified phenomenon. As if they are inconsequential of the capitalist mode of production, they are simply inherited from former, "more backward" modes of production; as if they'd still exist regardless of present conditions. The concept of race and racism as we know it today arose from colonialism, not from some past primitive stage from history, and even then concepts like racism and slavery work differently in the XXIst century than their XVIII century counterparts. Today women are still deprived from control over their bodies and their reproductives rights not because of bible thumping nutjobs (not mainly at least) or the backwardness of the capitalist class but because, and I am quoting myself:

The working-class family is the capitalist system’s economic unit, an integral part of the reproduction of capitalist relations. As a necessary component of the wage form of exploitation, capitalism imposes a sexual division of labor. Women are obliged to fulfill the wife/mother role in order to ensure the system a steady supply of labor power.
Capitalism can do away with whatever impedes its "progress", if racism and sexism are still around it has little to do with the fact that similar processes happened before in history and a lot to do with how they serve capital, they are functioning mechanisms that sustain our present conditions and mode of production, not simply leftovers from "darker times".
All of this without even discussing primitive communism.

I'm exhausted as of now, I can try to elaborate more but I think I've said enough on the matter.
Long story short: Intersectionality is nothing new that Marxism hasn't said better and more critically before, it's liberals plagiarizing and trying to de-radicalize marxist theory; or even more simply, it's selling fucking common sense. Of course it can be "seen" as compatible!
No hard feelings, anyone.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Read my post again without presuposing anything, reading only what I am saying and you'll see we not disagreeing as much as you think
Fair enough. If I misinterpreted your meaning, then hopefully reading the rest of this post will clear things up.


My attacks to these politics are diametrically opposed to theirs. No one in this thread said that the struggle of women, black people, LGBt et al are frivolous and individualist. In fact, yours truly has taken a position of the contrary being the case!
Very well. That wasn't what I interpreted as being the case in your previous post, but thank you for stating this outright.


abolishing sexual classes
Please define "sexual classes", as I want to make sure I'm understanding what you mean.


abolishing gender
Are we talking abolishing gender roles or something else?


BUT also vice versa, there is no abolishing exploitation of labor, etc. without abolishing the mode of production that necessitates and reproduces those conditions: Capitalism. It is implicit in our struggle!
Agreed, abolishing capitalism is the only way to abolish all oppressions. Though that of course requires a revolutionary movement that recognizes that and is committed to that goal. As you point out, preudo-revolutionaries have at times outnumbered the real deal.

Now I'm about to fall asleep, so I'll end here for now rathr than desending into posting incoherently.

[Radical Atom]

Fair enough. If I misinterpreted your meaning, then hopefully reading the rest of this post will clear things up.


Very well. That wasn't what I interpreted as being the case in your previous post, but thank you for stating this outright.

Hey, no harm done. I imagine you might have crossed with many pseudo-left degenerates ("these things are secondary, brah, don't you get it?") of various stripes yourself; and you "braced yourself for something" that wasn't there, so the mistake can understandable, albeit for someone like me quite infuriating :lol:


Please define "sexual classes", as I want to make sure I'm understanding what you mean.

Maybe it wasn't the best way of phrasing it. If it makes it less confusing, I'll just say "patriarchy" in the future; which in retrospect I think I should have. For clarification: As I stated previously, women are not oppressed on account of them being "womanz" or being "considered inferior" but because of their biological capacity for producing a steady supply of labor, which capital has to regulate to its needs. Therefore there is also a sexual separation of labor, hence men and women having to act upon the role of their "sexual classes". That's what I meant.


Are we talking abolishing gender roles or something else?

In short: YES, we must abolish gender roles along with the notion of gender itself as consequence of abolishing identity. Instead of finding yourself a less alienating and oppressive "gender" for yourself, simply refuse to buy into any of it.

Long answer: Yes but going even farther, I regard gender altogether as a socially constructed and coercively imposed constraint that simply does not stand up to the complexity of human interaction and behavior, I do not oppose it just because it's "binary", but because it is reductionist and alienating. Let's get simple here, genders are stereotypes people are forced to conform to: refined and extensively reconstructed over decades, yes; but stereotypes nonetheless. And as oppressive, unrealistic and unnecessary the old gender binary was, any other type can be just as much.
Binary gender roles were useful in class society insofar as they were interchangeable with the sexual role ("women must act this or that way because it's ladylike, women must be ladylike because that's how women are"), they justified each other: gender was ideological and social, sex was practical. Now that capital has adapted to new conditions it has no need for rigid, fixed, binary gender roles and that's exactly why on today's consumer culture ideas of gender fluidity, gender identity and so on are so popular among liberals and some misguided leftists and it faces hardly any strong opposition other than typical ultra-reactionaries. Yes, there is still divisiveness on gender, but the non-binary gender camp has been gaining a lot of grown as of late and it has become the "acceptable" position to hold in general, which I guess is preferable to the pro-binary camp. Problem is, for all intensive purposes, gender is now more than ever a useless abstraction. What does it mean to be a woman in terms of gender nowadays? There are not two same exact women, just as there are no two same exact "negroes". You will see no connection apart from the sexual dimension (their subjugation under the patriarchy) between one women and another.
There is no "female" gender just as there is no other "gender" anymore. That's why both camps will never be able to agree, they are both entrenched in their own abstraction of gender, for ones it is the equivalent of sex, for the others is some metaphysical (gendered brains and other anti-scientific nonsense) notion of identity separate from sex. Gender is a political Schrodinger's cat.
Again we are faced with a false dichotomy brought on by the two main hegemonic ideologies, liberalism and conservatism: Gender binary (sexism, patriarchy) or gender spectrum/fluidity (individualism, postmodernism, identity politics). "Pick one" they say. Fuck that. They are both wrong, they are both worse.

One can argue that "having a spectrum of billion genders already renders it meaningless, pointless and to a point, ridiculous so why bother"; my rebuttal would be: then why sustain such a meaningless, pointless and ridiculous category?! And why must people conform to it, even if they are self-made and self-atributed? Why would they even need to if they weren't so alienated? Genders could not and now can't even less in any way signify the entirety of a human subject, it's just a more restrictive form (defined by a single personality trait) of identity.
We want to create a new world in which there is no practical difference (economical, social, etc) between a white heterosexual man and a latino lesbian, not further differentiate and separate them with empty, superficial categories.

And again, for clarification, I am aware of reactionary scum who opportunistically latch on to gender abolitionism to attack all trans people, that doesn't make gender abolitionism not worth looking into.



Agreed, abolishing capitalism is the only way to abolish all oppressions. Though that of course requires a revolutionary movement that recognizes that and is committed to that goal. As you point out, preudo-revolutionaries have at times outnumbered the real deal.
Oh, don't have a slight of doubt about that, and unfortunately yes, this has been and still is "mostly", but not always, the case.
Something along these lines is being discussed in the Left demographics thread, if you are interested on this discussion you are welcome to chime in.


Now I'm about to fall asleep, so I'll end here for now rathr than desending into posting incoherently.
Know that feel, rest well.

[ckaihatsu]

There is no contradiction between Marxism and intersectionality.

It just so happens that the engine of history is class struggle. That does not belittle other forms of oppression.


Yes.





[T]here are those who portray all identity politics as a distraction from class politics.


I see the various political positions of the left-right spectrum as being *relative* to each other, so no particular set of politics is ever 'invalid' -- it's just that it's not as *historically-progressive* as something that's to its left in position.

In my own formulation of the left-right spectrum I have 'identity politics' as being fundamentally *reformist*, while to its left are those positions that are based on 'class consciousness', namely '[nationalist] communists', 'radicals', 'trade unionists', 'labor militants', 'syndicalists', and beyond (all revolutionaries).


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals



http://s6.postimg.org/6omx9zh81/3_Ideologies_Operations_Fundamentals.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/cpkm723u5/full/)


Relatively speaking identity politics / nationalist progressivism *is* a distraction from class-conscious politics, because it's a matter of *priorities* and where one's energies should be directed. As a mnemonic device, I liken the left-right spectrum to a *spinning* linear expanse that then takes on the physical qualities of centripetal force (towards the center, into nationalism / national concerns), and centrifugal force (towards the outer extents, revolutionary-centralization, and fascism, respectively).

If there's more 'weight' (political attentions and efforts) towards the ('revolutionary') left-extent, then that would be *political polarization*, and the far-right would most-likely see an equivalent, counter-balancing growth as well (the extents gaining at the expense of the moribund, slowed-spinning centrist nation-state, towards a final battle over class).

This description is meant to say that there's more *at stake* the further one goes to the extents -- it may be thought-of as *logarithmic* (greatly lessening in political impact) towards the center and *exponential* (greatly increasing in political impact) towards the outer extents.

So, back to FH's statement, focusing on *class* politics has greater *impact* in the long-term, though there's relatively less 'weight' there (attentions / activity) under the status quo, compared to an 'easier' participation in 'identity politics', for *less* political impact / significance.


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism



http://s6.postimg.org/3si9so4xd/110211_Ideologies_Operations_Left_Centrifug.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/zc8b2rb3h/full/)





only deny that [those forms of oppression] will stop when class oppression does. Six thousand years of it have cemented in the superstructure a model that necessitates thorough re-education and restructuring, [I]even once the means of production are owned by the workers themselves. We had better start now.


This is an *incorrect* assessment, because all forms of oppression are based-in / derived-from the class division -- once the class divide has been superseded all of its 'knock-on effects' like racism, sexism, etc., will no longer have any (elitist) socio-economic basis for its functioning, and so will no longer exist.

Racism, sexism, etc., are not merely *prejudices* -- they are *structural social features* of the divide-and-conquer strategy used by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. A society could certainly grow towards social enlightenment for everyone if all that remained after a successful revolution were petty personal prejudices, but no socio-material-based class divide.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Oh, for fuck sake, you are arguing against a straw man and putting words on people's mouths, please have the decency to be respectful to the time I've put out on my post and to try to understand what is being conveyed instead presuposing with assumptions and prejudice. It's as if you started reading, you got to this paragraph, and forgot about everything else I've said.

To be fair, I think you are also strawmanning those who use theories of intersectionality, and characterizing them as a whole by cherry picking their most insufferable liberal voices.


Look at the language you use, you said "experiences of" instead of, say, struggle or oppression or subjugation: don't you see how individualist and subjectivist this outlook is? Well, what about the "experiences" of women MRAs, of Milo Yannopoulos, of Benjamin Netanyahu or David Horowitz?

The idea that we should take people's individual experiences seriously does not mean we should reduce our political discourse to people's experiences, or that we should validate all of their politics. Clearly the broader social setting is important, too, as is how the person in question articulates their experiences politically. Saying "I want to take the experience of the Jewish subject seriously when I analyze antisemitism" does not mean I then go and endorse the vile politics of Netenyahu. I might gain a better understanding of him and those voting for him, but that can serve as much for critique as for apology. And in the process, I might learn something about how it was for Jews to live through antisemitism.



What about the completely repulsive and abject euphemistic nightmare and language policing that exists today? (And again, just in case you want to misrepresent what I'm saying, no, I'm not talking being able to call women b***hes)

I am unclear what this has to do with intersectionality, other than the fact that some people who utilize the language of intersectionality also happen to be militantly politically correct. It's also worth noting that these language issues always seem frivolous and annoying until they become accepted.



Actual revolutionaries (be it movements, parties, people) on the other hand, built one of the most far-reaching attempts to change women's "role" in society, decriminalized homosexuality for the first time in modern history, promoted international solidarity between all workers of the world regardless of nationality, sex and race and opposed, denounced and confronted from the very start racism, such as the pogroms against Jews in Russia.
One of the greatest legacies of american revolutionaries is that of the Black Panther Party which was (spoiler alert) a class conscious movement that opposed race altogether instead of championing it like the reactionaries of the NoI. It was so effective that the U.S. government had to resort to one of the most virulent and violent campaigns against its own citizens in recent memory.

Yes, but the BPP still had serious problems with sexism in its ranks, and Huey Newton had to criticize the widespread homophobia in the party. In fact, the refusal of most Communist movements to recognize the oppression of LGBT people - in fact, their willingness to participate in it themselves - shows that most communists could use a deeper understanding of oppression.


Soooo... just like now, there are idiots who can't grasp left wing politics but identify with them nonetheless, and then make up contrived excuses and rhetoric to justify their reactionary views. So what? Again, just because you decide to only fixate yourself on those (obviously negative and undesirable) examples doesn't mean they were the only ones. The whole, point once again, is that you don't fight reactionaries with reactionary politics.


But isn't that what you're doing with intersectionality, to a point? Picking the most absurd examples to characterize the whole? And it is worth noting, Danielle is making this critique of Marxists as a Marxist, so they clearly do not think these leftwing idiots actually characterize Marxism.


Our only real disagreement is with intersectionality, I see it as something that says absolutely nothing new because it's a liberal vulgarization of what marxists have been saying since forever at best and another conduit for postmodernism, identity politics and other examples of anti-radicalism at worst.

I think the conclusions of intersectionality are fairly obvious, but are not necessarily things internalized by the Communist movement, particularly that people have various categories of oppressed folks that they live under at once (black women, black lesbians, asian homosexuals, Indian Muslim transgenders etc), and those who only suffer from one form of oppression are not aware of nor care for the heightened kinds of oppression these other figures face. It does not legitimate their views necessarily, but it does serve to explain aspects of their life. I don't think that conclusion is contradictory to Marxism, but it's also not a thesis Marx or Engels particularly pushed either. They spent time analyzing the working class woman in general, but not necessarily as much analyzing what it meant to be a black working class woman in the US for instance. Thus, there is space for an intersectional scholar (say Angela Davis, who is also notably a Marxist) to do that kind of work today in articulating the complex manifestation of oppression under certain social settings.

It's important to note that "intersectionality" is as much a debate within the feminist movement between more radical nonwhite feminists and liberal white feminists, and a debate within the antiracism movement between queer/feminist antiracists, and liberal antiracists. It is not necessarily a battle between Marxist class-analysis and liberals.



There is no "female" gender just as there is no other "gender" anymore. That's why both camps will never be able to agree, they are both entrenched in their own abstraction of gender, for ones it is the equivalent of sex, for the others is some metaphysical (gendered brains and other anti-scientific nonsense) notion of identity separate from sex. Gender is a political Schrodinger's cat.
Again we are faced with a false dichotomy brought on by the two main hegemonic ideologies, liberalism and conservatism: Gender binary (sexism, patriarchy) or gender spectrum/fluidity (individualism, postmodernism, identity politics). "Pick one" they say. Fuck that. They are both wrong, they are both worse.

We may one day live in a society without gender, but for better or for worse gender is still very much still a "real" thing, as much as money, national borders, race and legal contracts. This is an important part of how reification works - when a social construct is reified, it really is made real by the society in which the social construct exists. It will only go away once the social conditions which sustain it are gone, and I think they are still very much living in such conditions. Nor do I think we have two competing systems of gender - the traditional gender duality is still by far predominant. In fact, I think the "spectrum" notion of gender, at least as it exists today, presupposes the binary in a funny kind of way.

It is also worth noting, the hegemonic ideology of the West is also most certainly liberalism. Conservatism as it exists in the West is merely another form of liberalism - merely one which seems to embrace "sticking" to old, outdated forms of oppression well past their sell by date.

[Danse Macabre]

It's absurd. Stay away from it or you'll degenerate into a liberal rat.

[ComradeAllende]

As a matter of theoretical consistency, I find intersectionality (and its companion ideological narratives in the "pomo Left") to be of some use. It does add a bit more context into the analysis of social hierarchies (i.e black capitalists vs white workers, male workers and poor mothers, etc) which is often lacking when we talk about broad social units such as "classes".

But as a matter of praxis and of practical political power, intersectionality is a rather useless theory. It effectively polarizes society on the basis of "identity interests", which unlike traditional Marxist class analyst engages in a cacophony of cognitive dissonance and overemphasizes the ideas in societies (racial supremacy, sexuality, etc) rather than the materialist foundations upon which those ideas are based upon. As Radical Atom said, "idealistic" notions of racial and sexual identity are heavily influenced by the social and historical (and sometimes economical) context in which these notions develop. Racism and racial classifications did not emerge from the evil of "human nature" but rather from the tribalism of social units operating in a condition of economic scarcity, which (subsequent to the development of civilized society) rationalized the institutionalization of race-based slavery and discrimination under a number of pretenses (religion, science, political, etc). Racism can only be defeated and abolished via the abolition of economic scarcity and the emancipation of the poor and working classes; all attempts to combat the "ideology" of racism have failed miserably, by failing to deal with its material roots (immiseration of the white working and lower-middle classes under capitalism, racial propaganda the authoritarian style of modern blue-collar workplaces, etc) or by suppressing the latent racism of the lower classes via culture, feeding into the socio-political backlash of the Trump phenomenon and the alt-right reactionaries. In other words, the race war and the class war are not and cannot be separated; we must unite the workers of all colors to smash the capitalist machine and end the system of racism that it propagates.

[Radical Atom]

To be fair, I think you are also strawmanning those who use theories of intersectionality, and characterizing them as a whole by cherry picking their most insufferable liberal voices.

But isn't that what you're doing with intersectionality, to a point? Picking the most absurd examples to characterize the whole? And it is worth noting, Danielle is making this critique of Marxists as a Marxist, so they clearly do not think these leftwing idiots actually characterize Marxism.

What you say about Danielle is true and though I've never personally attacked him I apologize if it came off as such, I might have been unlucky enough to only encounter the worst examples of proponents of intersectionality, and I've encountered a lot of them sometimes without even trying, my temper gets the worst out of me when it comes to insufferable liberal ideologues. I assure you that I come here to honestly discuss and argue, I didn't deliberately attempt to misrepresent pro-intersectionalists, I've only encountered proponents with actual points and grounded analysis that weren't liberals here in this thread and now.


The idea that we should take people's individual experiences seriously does not mean we should reduce our political discourse to people's experiences, or that we should validate all of their politics. Clearly the broader social setting is important, too, as is how the person in question articulates their experiences politically. Saying "I want to take the experience of the Jewish subject seriously when I analyze antisemitism" does not mean I then go and endorse the vile politics of Netenyahu. I might gain a better understanding of him and those voting for him, but that can serve as much for critique as for apology. And in the process, I might learn something about how it was for Jews to live through antisemitism.
No disagreement here. Just how is this exclusive to intersectionality? It is or should be common sense, implicit, in a Marxist analysis.


I am unclear what this has to do with intersectionality, other than the fact that some people who utilize the language of intersectionality also happen to be militantly politically correct.
I was attacking specifically Intersectionality but I went on a tangent when Danielle referred to the struggle of women, poc, etc. in a particular way (experiences as opposed to, for example, subjugation or oppression) that caught my eye (as in, it could be seen as interpreting struggle through an individualist and subjectivist lens), which brought about the general attitude and politics that, as you said, come with most of its proponents and how ineffective and counter-productive they are at combating oppression. It's hard to separate identity politics and political correctness from Intersectionality nowadays, but it's true that they are not necessarily always connected.


Yes, but the BPP still had serious problems with sexism in its ranks, and Huey Newton had to criticize the widespread homophobia in the party. In fact, the refusal of most Communist movements to recognize the oppression of LGBT people - in fact, their willingness to participate in it themselves - shows that most communists could use a deeper understanding of oppression.
But one thing is recognizing the backwardness and faults within revolutionary movements (and yes, most self-proclaimed communists "could use a deeper understanding of oppression" just as much of a deeper understanding of pretty much anything else) but the other is assuming that Marxism concerns itself only with class (something which I've seen both "marxists" and liberals say). The Panthers homophobia does not negate Bebel's admittedly ahead of time analysis on the criminalization of homosexuality, yes? With that I'm not trying to excuse the panthers (no such attitudes are excusable, not even in their historical context, and yes, even Marx and Engels did fall victims to their times as well), what I'm rather clumsily trying to convey is that for all the lack of critical thinking and backwardness of many "radicals" today, within our tradition there is no shortage of analysis and research on all kinds of issues and subjects, what we need as movement, if we are to be a legitimate movement once again, is reflecting more on it.


I think the conclusions of intersectionality are fairly obvious, but are not necessarily things internalized by the Communist movement, particularly that people have various categories of oppressed folks that they live under at once (black women, black lesbians, asian homosexuals, Indian Muslim transgenders etc), and those who only suffer from one form of oppression are not aware of nor care for the heightened kinds of oppression these other figures face. It does not legitimate their views necessarily, but it does serve to explain aspects of their life. I don't think that conclusion is contradictory to Marxism, but it's also not a thesis Marx or Engels particularly pushed either.
But there's no actual communist movement as of now, any idiot can pick an identity and call himself a communist. That's why people feel like there is a need for intersectionality, because most self-appointed communist no grasp of leftist politics other than petty sloganeering and they hold pretty reactionary views. No disagreement there apart from that. Just saying that it's nothing particularly new and that Marxists can easily draw such conclusions without intersectionality. If I can, anybody can; I don't hold any special key to a particular secret wisdom, I'm just as "worthless" as anyone else. As you say, these conclusions are fairly obvious, and to us at least, it should be implicit in our struggle and analysis. None of that is exclusive to intersectionality. Intersectionality is "not incompatible" with Marxism because what it says is basic common sense for actual Marxists. And the fact that it's happily adopted and paraded by liberal ideologues makes me feel, at the very least, a bit suspicious.


It's important to note that "intersectionality" is as much a debate within the feminist movement between more radical nonwhite feminists and liberal white feminists, and a debate within the antiracism movement between queer/feminist antiracists, and liberal antiracists. It is not necessarily a battle between Marxist class-analysis and liberals.
True, my main focus was on the latter but I could have recognized that it is not a "one front" battle.


We may one day live in a society without gender, but for better or for worse gender is still very much still a "real" thing, as much as money, national borders, race and legal contracts. This is an important part of how reification works - when a social construct is reified, it really is made real by the society in which the social construct exists. It will only go away once the social conditions which sustain it are gone, and I think they are still very much living in such conditions.
We are not disagreeing on that regard either! I'd be foolish to say that gender can simply be abolished as of now. All I'm saying is that it is an alienating and oppressive social category that instead being of championed or attempting to "own it", it should be confronted and opposed until we manage, in the long run, to abolish it by destroying the social conditions that sustain it along with any other kind of oppression. That when push comes to shove, gender will have to go away along with race, class, nation, identity...


In fact, I think the "spectrum" notion of gender, at least as it exists today, presupposes the binary in a funny kind of way.
Spot on, I failed to mention that. I was exhausted by that point.

[Fellow_Human]

But here you fall into the ideological trap of regarding present forms of oppression as some sort of transhistorical ossified phenomenon. As if they are inconsequential of the capitalist mode of production, they are simply inherited from former, "more backward" modes of production; as if they'd still exist regardless of present conditions.

All I'm arguing is that moving past capitalism is a necessary though not sufficient requirement. One demolishes a building from the bottom, but I'm not looking for any panaceas or silver bullets. There are many Marxists who fall to economic determinism.


The influence between the base and the superstructure is unequal and dissimilar but bidirectional. As history has shown, a change in the economic base does not necessarily result in an automatic, instant and parallel change in the cultural superstructure. Western Europe has moved well past the feudal mode of production, yet vestiges of the past order remain -- the monarchies, titled landowners, Catholicism, sundry customs and societies such as Freemasonry.


Unless someone shows how those social categories can be solved by a transition from capitalism alone, there is no reason to believe they will be. Progress and improvements that are made under capitalism should remain with us under socialism. The changes that have occurred over the last centuries also did not occur on their own; they required that real people go out on the real streets and act.


The working-class family is the capitalist system’s economic unit, an integral part of the reproduction of capitalist relations. As a necessary component of the wage form of exploitation, capitalism imposes a sexual division of labor. Women are obliged to fulfill the wife/mother role in order to ensure the system a steady supply of labor power.

Humans can't reproduce asexually. You need both a bio-mother and a bio-father. Once the baby is born, the genders of their primary caretakers are irrelevant. There is nothing about gender or sex making a given person more or less capable of taking care of children.


If it was all just about raising new proletarians to be exploited by the bourgeoisie, the genders of those "spouse-parents" would make no different to the bourgeoisie, whether it was done by wife-mothers or husband-fathers.


abolishing gender

Interesting that you should say so. Clearly, there's much variation on this stance between different currents. The last person who I read insisting on it was a member of a Maoist-Third Worldist party. Do you happen to know what circles that position is popular in?


But for every brocialist there is a Marxist feminist, for every "patriotic" communist there is an internationalist.

Are you rejecting Marxist feminism and proletarian internationalism?


Again we are faced with a false dichotomy brought on by the two main hegemonic ideologies, liberalism and conservatism: Gender binary (sexism, patriarchy) or gender spectrum/fluidity (individualism, postmodernism, identity politics). "Pick one" they say. Fuck that. They are both wrong, they are both worse.

Both worse than what?



In short: YES, we must abolish gender roles along with the notion of gender itself as consequence of abolishing identity. Instead of finding yourself a less alienating and oppressive "gender" for yourself, simply refuse to buy into any of it.

I see that you're contrasting socialist feminism with postmodern feminism.


If you believe a genderless society is the most favorable outcome, how do you get there? Do you believe that gender would need to be abolished deliberately or that it can simply "wither away" like the state? Don't you agree that it would be blatantly authoritarian to prevent individuals who wish to do gender from doing so, and that instead a better focus would be giving individuals the freedom to have any gender identity or lack thereof that they desire?


Personally, I believe that "disrupting the binary" would be very much a step forward, if that's what it takes to subvert gender itself. Mind you that the kind of "freedom of gender" that those same postmodernists propose is not only a freedom to do any gender but also a freedom to do none at all, just like the freedom of religion is also a freedom from religion.

[Fellow_Human]

Relatively speaking identity politics / nationalist progressivism *is* a distraction from class-conscious politics, because it's a matter of *priorities* and where one's energies should be directed.

What's wrong with certain activists "specializing" in more narrow issues, be they LGBT rights or environmental protection? A priority, perhaps, but a personal one.


Noam Chomsky has been asked about this:


CH: Do you think that for students in our universities today, it is important to focus on these single issues because they contain within them the critique of the system?


NC: It’s important to begin with the issues that interest and concern you. That’s just for almost anything. But if you just look at those issues you’re quickly going to get into deeper ones and I think you have to think about the whole range. I mean, nobody can be an activist working on everything, that’s impossible. So if you really want to do something you are going to focus, you have to, whatever it may turn out to be. As soon as you do focus, if you think about it, you are going to find that you are facing fundamental questions about the nature of the social and economic institutions in which we live, and the political ones. Then you are going to link up with other people who are working on their issue and they’ll run into the same problems. So I just don’t see a contradiction. This is where activism leads.


chomsky . info/20130312/



This is an *incorrect* assessment, because all forms of oppression are based-in / derived-from the class division -- once the class divide has been superseded all of its 'knock-on effects' like racism, sexism, etc., will no longer have any (elitist) socio-economic basis for its functioning, and so will no longer exist.

Are you that saying it would be impossible for a classless society to suffer from any bigotry? Because without either historical precedents or systematic argumentation to account for the putative chain of cause and effect, that would remain a purely speculative assertion. Victories for labor do not automatically translate into victories for the various minorities. They may go hand in hand, but they're not perfectly parallel.


Marxism / Marxists note that class *isn't* comparable to bourgeois-strategic types of social oppression, like racism, sexism, etc. -- no "classism" -- since class is the *fundamental* social divide and could be thought-of as a *combination* of economic-exploitation and social-oppression (my formulation).

"Classism" is a thing -- or, at least, a word. However, the meaning of the word is far more superficial than what a Marxist might think of when they hear "class oppression." Basically, it refers to interpersonal bias against persons of socioeconomically less advantaged status or origins, e.g. treating somebody worse because of their sociolect.

[Wessex Way Monster]

It's absurd. Stay away from it or you'll degenerate into a liberal rat.
Marxism?

Seriously, even if I agreed with you (which I don't, not because I really have any affinity for intersectionality but because I think this whole debate is irrelevant), this is an absurd comment meant to imply that anyone who deviates from Marxist thought (or perhaps the broader traditional leftist thought?) is a liberal. This is demonstrably untrue unless you decide to completely alter what the word liberal even means.



If you believe a genderless society is the most favorable outcome, how do you get there? Do you believe that gender would need to be abolished deliberately or that it can simply "wither away" like the state?
I highly doubt human beings could have gender without social coercion, seeing as gender is coercion.


What's wrong with certain activists "specializing" in more narrow issues

activists
Answered your own question there.

[Fellow_Human]

I highly doubt human beings could have gender without social coercion, seeing as gender is coercion.

How is gender coercion?


Answered your own question there.

Pardon me? I'll need you to elaborate on that as well, please.

[Radical Atom]

All I'm arguing is that moving past capitalism is a necessary though not sufficient requirement. One demolishes a building from the bottom, but I'm not looking for any panaceas or silver bullets. There are many Marxists who fall to economic determinism.

While it might be true for some small fringe Marxists, I still don't have a good example of what this "economic determinism" is. Unless you mean the kind of people that say "fighting racism is pointless bro, it's capitalism, don't be a centrist reformist, brah". In which case calling them economic determinist is giving them to much credit.



The influence between the base and the superstructure is unequal and dissimilar but bidirectional. As history has shown, a change in the economic base does not necessarily result in an automatic, instant and parallel change in the cultural superstructure. Western Europe has moved well past the feudal mode of production, yet vestiges of the past order remain -- the monarchies, titled landowners, Catholicism, sundry customs and societies such as Freemasonry.

But these vestiges, apart from monarchies and Catholicism (religion in general) which we'll get to, are wholly irrelevant to the wide context of global capitalism. Their existence is relegated to a symbolic and fringe LARPer irrelevance, they exist because they do not and cannot in any way whatsoever affect the current capitalist order. Seriously, we NEED to be remembered of these institutions, they don't just spontaneously pop up in hour heads like other things do. They aren't even present in our immediate frame of reference: (Freemasonry... Oh yeah those guys / wierdos!) that's how irrelevant they are.
Again, capitalism can do away with anything that impedes its progress. Those institutions neither impede it nor push its progress, they are sidelined.

Before we get specifically to these two exceptions it must be clarified that just because there is a superstitious and ritualistic element to them that doesn't mean their existence is owed to darker times or backward mentality, they are very much updated to current events. These "rituals" and "superstitiousness" are ideological!
As for monarchies, they are useful for stirring up nationalist sentiments and provide legitimization for the political power, they justify each other (I think the UK is a good example, for another look at Spain).
As for religion, do I really need to elaborate? Just look at American politics and how religion is huge cog in the political machine, look at Europe and how religion plays a huge role in justifying vile racist attacks either through islamophobia or "ethno-religious heritage" fallacies (europe iz a kristun continent), or look at Iran or any Islamic republic and how political and religious power merges.
If such things really owed their existence being "vestigial" christians would either still be burning witches or there'd be no christians at all.
Why do you think is the reason of the revival, an arguably much older form of religion than monotheistic abrahamic religions, of paganism if not ideological? It cannot be vestigial because it has remained largely in obscurity or relegated to history books for centuries.

Neither of them are vestigial, they are institutions that have been assimilated, refined and updated by and evolved within the capitalist mode of production to present conditions. Some just had a better transition than others.



Unless someone shows how those social categories can be solved by a transition from capitalism alone, there is no reason to believe they will be. Progress and improvements that are made under capitalism should remain with us under socialism. The changes that have occurred over the last centuries also did not occur on their own; they required that real people go out on the real streets and act.

One good reason is that those social relations are facilitated and sustained by capitalism. It's a simple connection really. That doesn't mean of course that it won't have to be a conscious, willful and directed effort. Maybe that's where you though we were disagreeing?



Humans can't reproduce asexually. You need both a bio-mother and a bio-father.

No, you misunderstand. Gender is not biological sex, it used to be interchangeable with sex because within the gender binary each gender conformed to its correspondent sex. Gender is a social category (for some un-scientific ideologues, even a neurological phenomenon). Re-read my previous post on gender to understand what I mean.


If it was all just about raising new proletarians to be exploited by the bourgeoisie, the genders of those "spouse-parents" would make no different to the bourgeoisie, whether it was done by wife-mothers or husband-fathers.


It would very much have made a huge difference if women were sexually emancipated, had access to safe birth control and could not be coerced or even forced (be it through social norms or physically) to marry men, form families or even have children. Do you realize how much different it would be if this were the case? How many women would choose to live their lives on their own terms, without needing to "find a man", to "form a family", to "have children". I remind you that in the west there is still this trend of thinking in the west that women who do not have children are somehow "selfish".
Or do you think that until now women preferred, "chose", to become stay-at-home mothers and be used as family baby making machines as opposed to live independently from the oppressive nuclear family structure?
No one other than conservatives and alt-righters is saying that this or that gender or this or that sex is more apt for anything, I don't know why are we arguing about this.
Gender is relevant here because it was the ideological justification for the sexual division of labor. And yes, the role of the mother specifically is more relevant because she is the one with the biological capacity to produce new labour. Loving father's can do anything for their children, except, you know, give birth to them. That's exclusive to Arnold Schwarzenegger.


Interesting that you should say so. Clearly, there's much variation on this stance between different currents. The last person who I read insisting on it was a member of a Maoist-Third Worldist party. Do you happen to know what circles that position is popular in?

Afaik it's mostly popular with (both good and bad kind of) radical feminist circles, you'll have the most luck informing yourself there; unfortunately many, or some, of them are raging transphobes who think men are conspiring to escape their male privilege or something.
I think it's a touchy and problematic subject in which things like the reassignment industry that profits of off vulnerable people who suffer dysphoria should be addressed and confronted, these people need help (not in the "they are craaazy" or "sick in the head" sense, by help I mean the same support anyone else who is under psychological distress, dysphoria in this case, should have) not manipulation.


Are you rejecting Marxist feminism and proletarian internationalism?

WHAT?! NO! Don't read so literally into things. I'm saying that for every pseudo-commie reactionary (brocialist/nationalist/patriotic) there is at least another who is a genuine revolutionary (marxist feminist/internationalist).



Both worse than what?

It's a tongue-in-cheek reference to a quote by Stalin: when asked which deviation of Marxism was worse, the rightist or the leftist, he answered: they are both worse. What I'm saying is don't choose based on what you don't want, you might get it. I am vehemently opposed to lesser-evilism.



I see that you're contrasting socialist feminism with postmodern feminism.
Now you're correct.


If you believe a genderless society is the most favorable outcome, how do you get there? Do you believe that gender would need to be abolished deliberately or that it can simply "wither away" like the state? Don't you agree that it would be blatantly authoritarian to prevent individuals who wish to do gender from doing so, and that instead a better focus would be giving individuals the freedom to have any gender identity or lack thereof that they desire?

This has been addressed by me and by others already.


Personally, I believe that "disrupting the binary" would be very much a step forward, if that's what it takes to subvert gender itself. Mind you that the kind of "freedom of gender" that those same postmodernists propose is not only a freedom to do any gender but also a freedom to do none at all, just like the freedom of religion is also a freedom from religion.

Nothing disagreeable here except for the last part: those who propose breaking up with it all, transcend the concept of gender altogether are radicals, you could argue that the propositions of postmodernists such as the gender spectrum et al are so contradictory, absurd and ridiculous (what freedom they "offer" is for example that there are as many genders as there are people, but you still have to pick one, even if it is the "genderless" gender) that, practically, they invalidate gender altogether; but that's giving them to much credit, it's not intentional in the least. At this point I think they confuse or conflate "gender" personality, which is to its detriment because gender is an even more restrictive form of identity (defining oneself over a single fucking characteristic of your life).


How is gender coercion?
Because as has been stated many times before, gender is not biological sex. Gender is a restrictive, coercive, oppressive and alienating social category because it's an unrealistic stereotype we are all forced to conform to:
Men (biological sex) are supposed to be "manly" (gender): aggressive, dominant, "rational", containing their emotions.
Women (biological sex) are supposed to be "laidylike" or "femenine" (gender): submissive, kind, "irrational", "motherly".
If a man or woman fails to to live up to the out of touch and unrealistic expectations of the gender imposed on him (such as failing "get a woman", "crying in public", etc. in the case of men; "being to masculine", "not having children" etc. in the case of women) they will suffer massively both internally and externally, it is both public and self-humiliation, it is ideological.

Gender must be abolished not because some people can't conform to it (androgyny, etc.), but because NOBODY CAN NOR SHOULD.

Addendum: since I've gotten quite carried away on this board and thread in particular, which has been simultaneously interesting, time-consuming and exhausting; and since I think we can agree I've elaborated quite enough on my positions, I'll try to take a little break and disconnect from the Matrix for a while.

[Fellow_Human]

One good reason is that those social relations are facilitated and sustained by capitalism. It's a simple connection really. That doesn't mean of course that it won't have to be a conscious, willful and directed effort. Maybe that's where you though we were disagreeing?

Yes. That would be my main objection. We don't seem to have much we disagree on.


just because there is a superstitious and ritualistic element to them that doesn't mean their existence is owed to darker times or backward mentality, they are very much updated to current events. These "rituals" and "superstitiousness" are ideological!

Right, those feudal-born social institutions were re-adapted to the new mode of production. They changed, not disappeared, as did gender. I don't deny that they have a functional role in the capitalist system -- though a much more humble one today, and with more benefit to the haute bourgeoisie than the petite bourgeoisie -- so I just wanted to draw attention to their survivability. Capitalism didn't really need them -- in fact, they were actively fought against by the liberal revolutionaries -- yet some of them survived.


Why do you think is the reason of the revival, an arguably much older form of religion than monotheistic abrahamic religions, of paganism if not ideological? It cannot be vestigial because it has remained largely in obscurity or relegated to history books for centuries.

There are two very different kinds of Neopagans: the nationalists and the environmentalists.


Gender is relevant here because it was the ideological justification for the sexual division of labor. And yes, the role of the mother specifically is more relevant because she is the one with the biological capacity to produce new labour. Loving father's can do anything for their children, except, you know, give birth to them. That's exclusive to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

At first you repeat that "gender is not biological sex," as if for the purposes of this discussion we could ignore biology altogether, but then you evoke childbirth. Loving mothers can do anything for their children except self-impregnation. A pregnancy is nine months of an automatic process; parenthood is very often a lifelong endevaor, normally with no fewer than 18 years of rearing.


It would very much have made a huge difference if women were sexually emancipated, had access to safe birth control and could not be coerced or even forced (be it through social norms or physically) to marry men, form families or even have children. Do you realize how much different it would be if this were the case? How many women would choose to live their lives on their own terms, without needing to "find a man", to "form a family", to "have children". I remind you that in the west there is still this trend of thinking in the west that women who do not have children are somehow "selfish".
Or do you think that until now women preferred, "chose", to become stay-at-home mothers and be used as family baby making machines as opposed to live independently from the oppressive nuclear family structure?

I wouldn't expect a gender abolitionist to focus entirely on one gender when talking about a topic that concerns both genders. Straight women's interest in marriage and parenthood would decrease while men's would remain the same? Yes, there may be more stigma to female childlessness than male, yet even that doesn't change the fact that statistically there are a few percent more childfree women than men. Those stigmatic attitudes are superstructural, artificial, without objective basis in reality.


marry men [. . .] live their lives on their own terms, without needing to "find a man", to "form a family" [. . .] as opposed to live independently from the oppressive nuclear family structure?

I'm sure that's not what you're saying, but just to make sure: are you saying that marriage, as it exists today, is worthless? I would very much agree that marriage is not and should not be for everyone, but there are those whose needs this way of life perfectly fits, for whom their spouse is their everything and who would not have it any other way.


I think it's a touchy and problematic subject in which things like the reassignment industry that profits of off vulnerable people who suffer dysphoria should be addressed and confronted, these people need help (not in the "they are craaazy" sense) not manipulation.

What kind of help do you believe they need?


what freedom they "offer" is for example that there are as many genders as there are people, but you still have to pick one, even if it is the "genderless" gender

A "genderless gender" is somewhat of an oxymoron, don't you think? Like an irreligious religion. After all, atheism is not a religion. Is agenderedness a gender?


but that's giving them to much credit, it's not intentional in the least.

Intentional or not, it's useful.


It is somewhat of a conscious strategy. Judith Butler laid that down quite frankly at the end of part I of her magnum opus:


"This text continues, then, as an effort to think through the possibility of subverting and displacing those naturalized and reified notions of gender that support masculine hegemony and heterosexist power, to make gender trouble, not through the strategies that figure a utopian beyond, but through the mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation of precisely those constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity."


Because as has been stated many times before, gender is not biological sex. Gender is a restrictive, coercive, oppressive and alienating social category because it's an unrealistic stereotype we are all forced to conform to:

The enforcement of gender roles often involves coercion; coercion doesn't seem to be an integral part of gender, however. An absence of coercion (if such is possible), I believe, might or might not eventually lead to the absence of gender.


Addendum: since I've gotten quite carried away on this board and thread in particular, which has been simultaneously interesting, time-consuming and exhausting; and since I think we can agree I've elaborated quite enough on my positions, I'll try to take a little break and disconnect from the Matrix for a while.

Take care, comrade.

[Wessex Way Monster]

Because as has been stated many times before, gender is not biological sex. Gender is a restrictive, coercive, oppressive and alienating social category because it's an unrealistic stereotype we are all forced to conform to:
Men (biological sex) are supposed to be "manly" (gender): aggressive, dominant, "rational", containing their emotions.
Women (biological sex) are supposed to be "laidylike" or "femenine" (gender): submissive, kind, "irrational", "motherly".
If a man or woman fails to to live up to the out of touch and unrealistic expectations of the gender imposed on him (such as failing "get a woman", "crying in public", etc. in the case of men; "being to masculine", "not having children" etc. in the case of women) they will suffer massively both internally and externally, it is both public and self-humiliation, it is ideological.

Gender must be abolished not because some people can't conform to it (androgyny, etc.), but because NOBODY CAN NOR SHOULD.
I'll go one further and say that the distinction of biological sex is something made up to create division, medically speaking it is a large generalization that is becoming less and less useful when we analyze people's individual physiology, and while women tend to fall in one area and men tend to fall in another, the breakdown of man vs women seems to be inaccurate.

The creation of new bodies and labour is why we bother with this distinction. I don't think anything regarding gender or sex could be seen as relevant when coercion and labour are under attack.

How is gender coercion?
It is the tool through which labour is distributed amongst bodies.

This is why postmodernism is an issue. Creating an infinite number of tasks for an infinite variety of identities (QPOC, agender, middle class gay, etc) to trap as many people in capital as possible. Rejecting gender is the same thing as rejecting capital, civilization, and coercion.


Pardon me? I'll need you to elaborate on that as well, please.
Activists change the conditions of capital, they don't end it. Often times, not even that. They put their stupid efforts on a resume when they go to work for the Green party or apply for their position at the local college. To them, struggle is nothing but opportunity for living within capital.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

A quick interjection here (the same interjection I end up making in most of these threads - sorry):

I think it's worthwhile and necessary to draw a line of demarcation between, on one hand, an individualized liberal identity politics, and, on the other, intersectionality emerging particularly out of Women of Colour feminism/Black feminism/womanism.
The latter, aiming to articulate the fundamental interrelation between all forms of oppression and their historical co-development constitutes a necessary corrective to patriarchal and white supremacist Marxisms that have continued to be hegemonic among self-described communists in the first world.

In a way, I think it's ironic that the two are conflated, since intersectionality was largely formulated as a response to the narrowness of liberal identity politics. That the latter has appropriated the language of the former is, in my estimation, a challenge to be faced, and not in any way an indictment of intersections analysis any more than the proliferation of shitty college bro Trots is an indictment of Marxism.

[Cactus]

If you're a true Marxist, you should avoid intersectionality and other SJW crud like the plague, other than to criticise it. Marxism argues for a scientific material analysis of the nature of our world and its components, whereas intersectionality argues for calling every one who disagrees with you a privileged, hitler loving, freedom hater, whilst relying on a contrived victim status as a prerogative to be unchallenged on these ideas. It is anathema to Marxism.

[Wessex Way Monster]

If you're a true Marxist, you should avoid intersectionality and other SJW crud like the plague, other than to criticise it. Marxism argues for a scientific material analysis of the nature of our world and its components, whereas intersectionality argues for calling every one who disagrees with you a privileged, hitler loving, freedom hater, whilst relying on a contrived victim status as a prerogative to be unchallenged on these ideas. It is anathema to Marxism.

You're right. It is anathema to Marxism, because Marxism revolves around calling everyone who disagrees with you liberal, fascist, or revisionist while relying on a contrived label of being 'scientific' as a prerogative to be unchallenged in its ideas.

They're the exact opposite of each other.

[GLF]

If you're a true Marxist, you should avoid intersectionality and other SJW crud like the plague, other than to criticise it. Marxism argues for a scientific material analysis of the nature of our world and its components, whereas intersectionality argues for calling every one who disagrees with you a privileged, hitler loving, freedom hater, whilst relying on a contrived victim status as a prerogative to be unchallenged on these ideas. It is anathema to Marxism.

While I recognize that social disparities do exist which favor people who look like me, I have to admit that as a member of the white lower class I find it extremely fucking infuriating that, more times than not, those whites who talk about this stuff are possessing of far more privilege than I've ever known in my life. It's like, who do these sanctimonious, self-righteous bourgeois fucks think they are projecting their privilege onto a people being worked to death by their very own benefactors? I have nothing in common with these people that they should speak for me. I throw my lot in with the women, minorities, and downtrodden.

Now that's not to say that white privilege doesn't exist or that the rhetoric used by social justice warriors is invalid, as in most cases they are at least correct in what they are saying. The problem is in the causes they name, and the solutions they offer. As I mentioned before, these are more often than not people with self-interest in the capitalist system. Sometimes I honestly feel that the modern centre-left and their mainstream media cronies are often harmful because they use the fruits of capitalism and the disunity it's caused into turning the proles against each other, sowing division among working class ranks and suggesting solutions which ultimately, in the long run, serve only to extend the long arm of the bourgeois state.

As true leftists, we are letting the wrong people dictate the national conversation on these issues, and in the long run the working people will pay the price.

[Radical Atom]

At first you repeat that "gender is not biological sex," as if for the purposes of this discussion we could ignore biology altogether, but then you evoke childbirth. Loving mothers can do anything for their children except self-impregnation. A pregnancy is nine months of an automatic process; parenthood is very often a lifelong endevaor, normally with no fewer than 18 years of rearing.


I wouldn't expect a gender abolitionist to focus entirely on one gender when talking about a topic that concerns both genders. Straight women's interest in marriage and parenthood would decrease while men's would remain the same?

No, no, no! Quite the contrary on both accounts!!!!

I'm saying that biology can't be ignored in this regard because women have been subjugated to men because of their reproductive capacities, men are solely impregnators, they cannot produce heirs in on themselves; I think there's no need to remind you that sex-love monogamous relationships are a fairly recent phenomenon, back then there were two ways of concluding a bourgeois marriage: In Catholic countries the parents procured a suitable wife for their young bourgeois son. And in Protestant countries, on the other hand, the rule was that the son of a bourgeois family was allowed to choose a wife from his own class with more or less freedom.In other words marriages were of convenience, the main reason for them was to produce suitable heirs to inherit the family's wealth and private property.
So the distinction is made between biological sex and its ramifications (sexual intercourse, reproduction, male/female biology) which is material and the social category (gender roles) developed to justify the supremacy of one biological sex over the other.



And of course the abolition of marriage would be desirable for everyone including men! It just so happens, let's be frank here, that women have had the short end of the stick, something which I hope everyone feels is indisputable.

Also, I would not recommend to refer to pregnancy as "just an automatic process", just... don't, it isn't so simple; women have to go through a lot to both prevent them and to have them, to keep them and to survive them while giving birth. Pregnancy and rearing are simply not comparable.
I think the main problem is that you seem to believe that the male "role" is being somewhat neglected, that men are put in a bad light so to say, but that is not only not true (quite the opposite) but also missing the point. That's precisely why I used that expression previously, to convey that loving fathers can and do very hard and caring work even despite the positions that society imposes on them (such as the patriarch), however the particularities of this or that family have no real practical implication on how society is structured and reproduces itself, much less on the mode of production.
Men have done and do as much good as women but it is despite their predicament on the sexual division of labor, not because of it. Just as some women can be as wicked as some men despite their subjugation to male supremacy. That is why it can seem like a one-sided discussion to the uninformed eye, but nothing is farther from the truth. Men are not to be blamed for the historical and contemporary conditions that imposed those circumstances on them and on women, but they can be blamed (individually, of course) for not doing anything to change them.
Just as the liberation of the negro was and still is part of the struggle for liberation of all workers, so is women's liberation and emancipation.


I really recommend you to read Engels' Origin of the Family if you haven't:

The position is quite different among the Ionians; here Athens is typical. Girls only learned spinning, weaving, and sewing, and at most a little reading and writing. They lived more or less behind locked doors and had no company except other women. The women’s apartments formed a separate part of the house, on the upper floor or at the back, where men, especially strangers, could not easily enter, and to which the women retired when men visited the house. They never went out without being accompanied by a female slave; indoors they were kept under regular guard. Aristophanes speaks of Molossian dogs kept to frighten away adulterers, and, at any rate in the Asiatic towns, eunuchs were employed to keep watch over the women-making and exporting eunuchs was an industry in Chios as early as Herodotus’ time, and, according to Wachsmuth, it was not only the barbarians who bought the supply. In Euripides a woman is called an oikourema, a thing (the word is neuter) for looking after the house, and, apart from her business of bearing children, that was all she was for the Athenian – his chief female domestic servant. The man had his athletics and his public business, from which women were barred; in addition, he often had female slaves at his disposal and during the most flourishing days of Athens an extensive system of prostitution which the state at least favored. It was precisely through this system of prostitution that the only Greek women of personality were able to develop, and to acquire that intellectual and artistic culture by which they stand out as high above the general level of classical womanhood as the Spartan women by their qualities of character. But that a woman had to be a hetaira before she could be a woman is the worst condemnation of the Athenian family.
This Athenian family became in time the accepted model for domestic relations, not only among the Ionians, but to an increasing extent among all the Greeks of the mainland and colonies also. [...]

This is the origin of monogamy as far as we can trace it back among the most civilized and highly developed people of antiquity. It was not in any way the fruit of individual sex-love, with which it had nothing whatever to do; marriages remained as before marriages of convenience. It was the first form of the family to be based, not on natural, but on economic conditions – on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property. The Greeks themselves put the matter quite frankly: the sole exclusive aims of monogamous marriage were to make the man supreme in the family, and to propagate, as the future heirs to his wealth, children indisputably his own. Otherwise, marriage was a burden, a duty which had to be performed, whether one liked it or not, to gods, state, and one’s ancestors. In Athens the law exacted from the man not only marriage but also the performance of a minimum of so-called conjugal duties.

Thus when monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history, it is not as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation. Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the subjugation of the one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period.
In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846, I find the words: “The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others. It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied.

The legal inequality of the two partners, bequeathed to us from earlier social conditions, is not the cause but the effect of the economic oppression of the woman. In the old communistic household, which comprised many couples and their children, the task entrusted to the women of managing the household was as much a public and socially necessary industry as the procuring of food by the men. With the patriarchal family, and still more with the single monogamous family, a change came. Household management lost its public character. It no longer concerned society. It became a private service; the wife became the head servant, excluded from all participation in social production. Not until the coming of modern large-scale industry was the road to social production opened to her again – and then only to the proletarian wife. But it was opened in such a manner that, if she carries out her duties in the private service of her family, she remains excluded from public production and unable to earn; and if she wants to take part in public production and earn independently, she cannot carry out family duties. And the wife’s position in the factory is the position of women in all branches of business, right up to medicine and the law. The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as its molecules.
In the great majority of cases today, at least in the possessing classes, the husband is obliged to earn a living and support his family, and that in itself gives him a position of supremacy, without any need for special legal titles and privileges. Within the family he is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, the specific character of the economic oppression burdening the proletariat is visible in all its sharpness only when all special legal privileges of the capitalist class have been abolished and complete legal equality of both classes established. The democratic republic does not do away with the opposition of the two classes; on the contrary, it provides the clear field on which the fight can be fought out. And in the same way, the peculiar character of the supremacy of the husband over the wife in the modern family, the necessity of creating real social equality between them, and the way to do it, will only be seen in the clear light of day when both possess legally complete equality of rights. Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society.

I hope this helps to comprehend better what I'm arguing for.


Take care, comrade.
Thanks, I'm trying to take smaller doses of Revleft at a time :lol:


I think it's worthwhile and necessary to draw a line of demarcation between, on one hand, an individualized liberal identity politics, and, on the other, intersectionality emerging particularly out of Women of Colour feminism/Black feminism/womanism.
The latter, aiming to articulate the fundamental interrelation between all forms of oppression and their historical co-development constitutes a necessary corrective to patriarchal and white supremacist Marxisms that have continued to be hegemonic among self-described communists in the first world.

And that I do not contest and to a point I can be comprehensive about it, what is to be contested is the supposed "marxism" of these reactionary ideologues. When I responded with For pseudo-left and liberal ideologues maybe I wasn't only being sarcastic and a bit "dickish" (that I will admit). I meant it literally as well, that it can be useful for and against pseudo-left and liberal ideologues, for example, as a 101 approach to issues that are completely alien to them despite their pretensions to the contrary.
My main issue, again, is that the conclusions of intersectionality should be obvious to actual Marxists. It doesn't say anything particularly new or that hasn't been discussed already and better within Marxism.
Just as Comrade Allende said:

As a matter of theoretical consistency, I find intersectionality (and its companion ideological narratives in the "pomo Left") to be of some use. It does add a bit more context into the analysis of social hierarchies (i.e black capitalists vs white workers, male workers and poor mothers, etc) which is often lacking when we talk about broad social units such as "classes".

But as a matter of praxis and of practical political power, intersectionality is a rather useless theory. It effectively polarizes society on the basis of "identity interests", which unlike traditional Marxist class analyst engages in a cacophony of cognitive dissonance and overemphasizes the ideas in societies (racial supremacy, sexuality, etc) rather than the materialist foundations upon which those ideas are based upon.

[Cactus]

You're right. It is anathema to Marxism, because Marxism revolves around calling everyone who disagrees with you liberal, fascist, or revisionist while relying on a contrived label of being 'scientific' as a prerogative to be unchallenged in its ideas.

They're the exact opposite of each other.
Not interesting. You've just basically said 'well so are you', to avoid having to defend the idea.

Can't wait for the part where you accuse me of making the same fallacy.

[Wessex Way Monster]

Not interesting. You've just basically said 'well so are you', to avoid having to defend the idea.

Can't wait for the part where you accuse me of making the same fallacy.

My larger point was that your argument was weak. It had no real substance to it. It was a word soup designed to sound like an argument but it wasn't one. It was based on a strawman of the politics that you constructed to fit an agenda. I was showing that argument can be made all day about any train if thought.

I think intersectionality is weak but you're gonna have to criticise it in a better way than that if you wish to do anything about it. In fact, that type of argument is indicative of Marxism's weakness as a movement in general, because when Marxism (or any other social movement) is strong the arguments themselves become of higher quality and are capable of more than petty strawmanning.

[Sectarian]

Hi! I would just like everyone here to know that I am a virtuous person who loves the oppressed!

[ketplaz]

Hi! I would just like everyone here to know that I am a virtuous person who loves the oppressed!

Youtube the video sAmM872874A kid. You need it.

[willowtooth]

intersectionality (did I spell that right?) is reactionary since its working from the concept that was created to oppress to begin with. For example you would not need to identify politically as a black woman if there was no such thing as racism or sexism, but since those things do exist there is obviously a opportunistic desire for leftists to recruit from these oppressed groups, who might only be acting for self interest, but there shouldn't be such a desire.

[Wessex Way Monster]

intersectionality (did I spell that right?) is reactionary since its working from the concept that was created to oppress to begin with. For example you would not need to identify politically as a black woman if there was no such thing as racism or sexism, but since those things do exist there is obviously a opportunistic desire for leftists to recruit from these oppressed groups, who might only be acting for self interest, but there shouldn't be such a desire.
Is it reactionary to recognize yourself as a working class individual and all of the effects that has on your life and your relations to others?

[willowtooth]

Is it reactionary to recognize yourself as a working class individual and all of the effects that has on your life and your relations to others?
I don't know, probably

[Fellow_Human]

So it's reactionary to be a communist?


"communism is reactionary since its working from the concept that was created to oppress to begin with. For example you would not need to identify politically as a proletarian if there was no such thing as class oppression."

[willowtooth]

So it's reactionary to be a communist?


"communism is reactionary since its working from the concept that was created to oppress to begin with. For example you would not need to identify politically as a proletarian if there was no such thing as class oppression."yeah sort of, not really I mean if your a politician pandering to the working class, calling yourself working class denouncing others ideas or opinions because they are not of the working class etc. If i win the lottery can I no longer be a communist? were marx and engles proletarians? there's obviously a big difference between ending the oppression of a group and politically identifying yourself as member of that oppressed group. Like malala yousafzai she got shot in the head by the taliban so everyone listened to her anecdotal stories, but as far as ending oppression of women or children in Afghanistan, was no expert she was mostly just a prop for charity fundraising. And is not smarter or more in tune with what needs to be done because she is a victim of oppression. Just like me working in a coal mine doesn't make me an expert in Marxian economics. I only have anecdotes and stories

[Fellow_Human]

First of all, if you're a proletarian, then your winning the lottery would not automatically make you a bourgeois. It would just give you some money on your hands. You would need to have enough to invest, and live off it. If all went well, you would join the nouveau riche, and require a period of cultural integration into your new class.

Of course you don't have to be a proletarian to be a communist. You don't have to be a woman to be a feminist, either. But if you believe that somebody other than X can substitute for X in X's own movement, brace yourself for a couple more North Koreas.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

If you're a true Marxist, you should avoid intersectionality and other SJW crud like the plague, other than to criticise it. Marxism argues for a scientific material analysis of the nature of our world and its components, whereas intersectionality argues for calling every one who disagrees with you a privileged, hitler loving, freedom hater, whilst relying on a contrived victim status as a prerogative to be unchallenged on these ideas. It is anathema to Marxism.

I think this is the epitome of ignorance, and represents an utter failure to engage with intersectional theory. To illustrate how out-of-touch this attack on straw feminists is, I'd like to offer an extended quotation from bell hooks, a thinker whose work has been central to the development of intersectionality. I hope comparing its content to the above will sufficiently demonstrate the former's utter disconnect with reality:


Feminist consciousness-raising has not significantly pushed women in the direction of revolutionary politics. For the most part, it has not helped women understand capitalism–how it works as a system that exploits female labor and its interconnections with sexist oppression. It has not urged women to learn about different political systems like socialism or encouraged women to invent and envision new political systems. It has not attacked materialism and our society’s addiction to overconsumption. It has not shown women how we benefit from the exploitation and oppression of women and men globally or shown us ways to oppose imperialism. Most importantly, it has not continually confronted women with the understanding that feminist movement to end sexist oppression can be successful only if we are committed to revolution, to the establishment of a new social order." (source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center)

[GLF]

I could be way off base here, but due to my experience arguing with fascists, I have come to suspect any online "communist" that rattles on about "SJWs" and "Feminists" as nothing more than far-right reactionaries attracted to communism's hatred of State and fiscal leftism, and if I were a moderator such people would be banned immediately.

[Wessex Way Monster]

I could be way off base here, but due to my experience arguing with fascists, I have come to suspect any online "communist" that rattles on about "SJWs" and "Feminists" as nothing more than far-right reactionaries attracted to communism's hatred of State and fiscal leftism, and if I were a moderator such people would be banned immediately.
I would say that you're right, however I will also say that tumblr activism (which, I believe, is where the term SJW comes from) is useless and oftentimes is willing to separate into a pro-capital act because to them a rich queer has more in common with a poor queer than the poor queer has to their straight male coworker.

ETA: my point being that is the generalization that folks who oppose intersectionality base their criticism on, whereas they are two entirely different camps.

[Cactus]

I actually happen to be Marxist, not a far right reactionary. This site is full of weakminded cultural Marxists, who buy into the distraction of identity politics. Identity politics, especially feminism, was created by the ruling elites as a tool to control the masses, whilst they push through their policies. You guys buy perfectly into it, and ban those who question the ideas that are common among the left. Its not really a home for revolutionary leftists, not as much as it is for poor oppressed social justice warriors.

[Wessex Way Monster]

I actually happen to be Marxist, not a far right reactionary. This site is full of weakminded cultural Marxists, who buy into the distraction of identity politics. Identity politics, especially feminism, was created by the ruling elites as a tool to control the masses, whilst they push through their policies. You guys buy perfectly into it, and ban those who question the ideas that are common among the left. Its not really a home for revolutionary leftists, not as much as it is for poor oppressed social justice warriors.

Lol holy shit man you've blown feminism wide open

[Exterminatus]

I actually happen to be Marxist, not a far right reactionary. This site is full of weakminded cultural Marxists, who buy into the distraction of identity politics. Identity politics, especially feminism, was created by the ruling elites as a tool to control the masses, whilst they push through their policies. You guys buy perfectly into it, and ban those who question the ideas that are common among the left. Its not really a home for revolutionary leftists, not as much as it is for poor oppressed social justice warriors.

Except what you're presenting here is not a Marxist analysis/criticism of feminism but the ravings of your average right wing conspiracist. Look at the choice of words here- "cultural Marxists", "ruling elites", "control the masses". This is not the language Marxists use. Just replace "feminism" with "Jews" and see what you get. It is not that we are not critical of our politics, it's the fact that Marxists criticize the existing order while presupposing it's achievements in the process of emancipation - to do otherwise is reactionary regardless under which beautiful words and phrases you disguise it. And this is why measures are needed to enforce a certain level of discourse which presupposes a set of principles that are simply not worth talking about anymore - they are a given for us.

[Cactus]

Except what you're presenting here is not a Marxist analysis/criticism of feminism but the ravings of your average right wing conspiracist. Look at the choice of words here- "cultural Marxists", "ruling elites", "control the masses". This is not the language Marxists use. Just replace "feminism" with "Jews" and see what you get. It is not that we are not critical of our politics, it's the fact that Marxists criticize the existing order while presupposing it's achievements in the process of emancipation - to do otherwise is reactionary regardless under which beautiful words and phrases you disguise it. And this is why measures are needed to enforce a certain level of discourse which presupposes a set of principles that are simply not worth talking about anymore - they are a given for us.
Because I used a word that some other group uses, I'm therefore part of that group and also a silly conspiracist for claiming identity politics was created to control the masses. I don't care about replacing the word "feminism" with "Jews", because I meant what I meant when I used the word "feminism". Am I supposedly wrong because you can replace "feminism" with "Jews"? You know all marxists are crazy conspiracists who believe that muslims are trying to kill us because we are terrorizing them. The actual obvious, non meticulously abstracted excuse is that they are trying to terrorize us, because they hate freedom. Things aren't required to be explained/critiqued by marxism, it is a theory that hasnt been updated since Lenin's time, and all that happens on this site, is people asking questions that have been answered 50 years ago. No revolutionary progression of Marxism takes place on the revleft. I use the term "cultural marxists" because that is what first world marxists are, they are a bunch of dogmatic, politically correct, leftists, who babble around in identity politics. Debating ideals over policy.

[Fellow_Human]

a silly conspiracist for claiming identity politics was created to control the masses.

You're looking at the wrong identity politics. "Controlling the masses" is when low-life deadbeats from the lumpenproletariat flock to the political right -- or the "alt-right" in the US -- in spite of their material interests just because the bourgeoisie is offering to stroke their egos for being White men. (Hint: they can't find anything else to be proud of.)


The actual obvious, non meticulously abstracted excuse is that they [Muslims] are trying to terrorize us, because they hate freedom.

No, "hatred for freedom" is abstracted; food on the table is concrete. There was a high level of uneven and combined development with the foreign introduction of industrial capitalism to the Middle East. People cope differently with that sort of tectonic change and social inequality. Of course some turned "nostalgic," and therefore reactionary. Many found consolation with the populist Islamists. Since the oil crisis of 1973, religious ideology became very prominent as a tool in the oil conflicts of the region. It was in the 1970s, a generation since most of the states in the region gained independence, that we saw the true rise of the Tajdid, the Islamic revival, which has only been growing worse.


Things aren't required to be explained/critiqued by marxism, it is a theory that hasnt been updated since Lenin's time

Marxist theory has been evolving -- and splintering -- to the present day, ever since Marx.

[GLF]

I actually happen to be Marxist, not a far right reactionary. This site is full of weakminded cultural Marxists, who buy into the distraction of identity politics. Identity politics, especially feminism, was created by the ruling elites as a tool to control the masses, whilst they push through their policies. You guys buy perfectly into it, and ban those who question the ideas that are common among the left. Its not really a home for revolutionary leftists, not as much as it is for poor oppressed social justice warriors.

I literally cannot believe that you aren't restricted yet. You are WAY too reactionary to be a Marxist.

Even if "cultural marxists" are a problem with the west, then I ask, problem for whom? If the social institutions binding the prole to god and country are under attack, why should leftists, let alone Marxists, bother defending them? Why should I care if the right-wingers and god-botherers (i.e traditionalists) are offended? In fact, the more these people complain about these things the more my heart will sing, because all it means is that we are making progress.

In reality, "cultural marxist" and "social justice warrior" are just code-words for those that resist right-wing tyranny and police-state brutality. And if you were truly a Marxist, you would realize this.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The idea that "feminism was created by the ruling elites" would be laughably ridiculous if it weren't so objectively reactionary.
That said, "feminism" has always been complicated, multifaceted, and contingent. Of course, this is true of any ideological banner, not least of all Marxism, with its professed adherents running the gamut from Schatmanite rightwing turds to the RAF, to the CPI(Maoist), and whoever the fuck else at any given historical moment.
Hell, even "feminism within Marxism" has liked like everything from "Proletarian Feminism" of the the Maoists, to Audre Lorde, to Silvia Federici, to LIES Journal . . . I could go on.
Has there been bourgeois "feminism" - certainly, just as there have been bourgeoisified Marxisms. But to throw out the struggle of women - what is, in the final analysis, a decisive struggle around the reproduction of labour and and capital - because some feminists are shitty is clearly idiotic in the extreme.

[GLF]

I would be willing to bet my right nut that Cactus is one of those alt-righters and just doesn't realize it yet. It's very common nowadays among certain circles of white working class people, particularly in Europe, to combine a perverted mockery of leftist economics with a defiantly reactionary far-right social agenda. I would be incredibly surprised if he were a Marxist at all. Marxists don't use far-right buzzwords, particularly in regards to those fighting for women's equality and social justice.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

What you say about Danielle is true and though I've never personally attacked him I apologize if it came off as such, I might have been unlucky enough to only encounter the worst examples of proponents of intersectionality, and I've encountered a lot of them sometimes without even trying, my temper gets the worst out of me when it comes to insufferable liberal ideologues. I assure you that I come here to honestly discuss and argue, I didn't deliberately attempt to misrepresent pro-intersectionalists, I've only encountered proponents with actual points and grounded analysis that weren't liberals here in this thread and now.


I don't feel the need to respond to every point, since I think we're in agreement about a lot. I would say though, that like the ability for any idiot to adopt "Marxism", any idiot can adopt "intersectional politics" too. In fact, non-marxist intersectionalists probably don't think through to the logical conclusions of intersectionality, which would presumably value the working class struggle too and recognize that Marxism is the clearest articulation of it!

While it is true that some notion of intersectional politics is implicit in Marxism, I think the benefit of intersectionality is in articulating on a theoretical level how different kinds of oppression interact. While Marx and Engels, among others, certainly explored such ideas, I don't think they did in depth in the way that, say, Angela Davis did (again, a Marxist who I think is one of the better "intersectional" thinkers out there)

Anyways, I appreciate your POV, I am much more sympathetic to your critique than that of, say, Cactus, who I think is being purposefully obtuse.

which brings me to ...


If you're a true Marxist, you should avoid intersectionality and other SJW crud like the plague, other than to criticise it. Marxism argues for a scientific material analysis of the nature of our world and its components, whereas intersectionality argues for calling every one who disagrees with you a privileged, hitler loving, freedom hater, whilst relying on a contrived victim status as a prerogative to be unchallenged on these ideas. It is anathema to Marxism.



What nonsense. The irony, of course, is that Cactus uses Malcom X as a profile picture, despite the fact that Malcom X was for most of his activist life a black separatist not a socialist (and I don't think he ever called himself a Marxist), and black separatism is by definition a form of identity politics. Moreover, the NoI was pretty explicit in calling white people all sorts of absurd things. And I say that as someone who still respects Malcom X and the historical role he played on the left.

People do often make hamfisted critiques of other folks who are "privileged", but that is not something essential to nor unique to intersectional politics. This is about as crude as strawmen come.


I actually happen to be Marxist, not a far right reactionary. This site is full of weakminded cultural Marxists, who buy into the distraction of identity politics. Identity politics, especially feminism, was created by the ruling elites as a tool to control the masses, whilst they push through their policies. You guys buy perfectly into it, and ban those who question the ideas that are common among the left. Its not really a home for revolutionary leftists, not as much as it is for poor oppressed social justice warriors.

wtf do you think "cultural marxism" is? You know this is mostly just a rightwing talking point, right? Or do you think obscure Marxist continental philosophers damaged Leftism more than some Georgian despot who hated gay people?

[ChangeAndChance]

I actually happen to be Marxist, not a far right reactionary. This site is full of weakminded cultural Marxists, who buy into the distraction of identity politics. Identity politics, especially feminism, was created by the ruling elites as a tool to control the masses, whilst they push through their policies. You guys buy perfectly into it, and ban those who question the ideas that are common among the left. Its not really a home for revolutionary leftists, not as much as it is for poor oppressed social justice warriors.

A reminder that the term "cultural Marxism" originated with the Nazis. The phrase "Kulturbolschewismus" referred to a perceived threat from the Soviet Union and a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to destroy Western Germanic culture through activist support for disenfranchised or marginal groups like women, gays and ethnic minorities. Since then it has been used exclusively by the far right until recently when people of privilege (especially self-described liberals) began using it to describe any social movement that personally offended them. Anyone who uses the term unironically is literally a fascist in disguise or in denial.

Recently, the bourgeoisie has been trying to co-op these largely organic social movements through ad campaigns and demographic targeting. That being said identity politics in and of themselves are not a tool of class domination no matter how much you try to convince yourself that they are.