Socialists on homosexuality

What were the opinions of Proudhon, Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Lenin, Rosa, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito and Hoxha on homosexuality?

I read somewhere that Marx wrote to Engels that "If homosexuality became politized we will have to defend it" does someone has that text?

Thanks

Rafiq has posted that here before. However Marx also shat on a politicized movement of queers.

Most of the socialists you listed I think actually hated queers.

I don't think there is any evidence that Marx, Engels, Bakunin, Trotsky, Lenin or Luxemburg had any hatred towards homosexuality.

I know that Lenin de-criminalised homosexuality. It is also conceivable that Bakunin was bisexual at the very least and some speculate his relationship with Nechayev was sexual, although I don't think there is any concrete evidence for that. Being opposed or hating homosexuality would certainly not be consistent with Bakunin's body of work.

Tito, Stalin and Hoxha were hideous homophobes by all accounts.

Sadly, for a long time in the socialist movement homosexuality was often seen as a symptom of 'bourgeois decadence'. In fact for some time it was actually considered an element of Fascism.

This wasn't necessarily universal mind you: Emma Goldman was by modern standards pro-lgbt, and one of the first American modern gay rights organization (the Mattachine Society) was founded by communists.

Not too bad for 19th century Germany, I'd say.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bebel/1898/01/13.htm

That's one of the reasons I don't buy many excuses regarding the subject in the 20s or 30s. But yeah, afaik, Emma Goldman was much ahead.

While I don't have the book on my there is some documentation that I've read recently of Marx's issues with queers.

You may be right about Bakunin, however I suspect the nechayev theory might be a bit of fan fiction hahahaha

Homophobia was at one time the default position, and just as much so on the Left. Marx and Engels were known to make homophobic comments in their personal correspondence. I don't know what Lenin's views were, but he supported the decriminalization of homosexuality (which was recriminalized under Stalin).

There were some people in the USA during the late 19th century who were on the political left & fought for homosexual rights...Alexander Berkman and (as previously mentioned) Emma Goldman, to name a couple. Leonard D. Abbott, as well. Benjamin Tucker was an outspoken advocate of free love, and published & promoted works by Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman when no one else would publish them in the USA (being outlawed in some areas, actually).

(All this info is in "Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States")

In Europe there were some people, mostly individualist anarchists like Emile Armand, who were big proponents of free love.

All of these people were affiliated with anarchist thought, though, which IMO has been more advanced than Marxism historically when it comes to the topic of sexuality.

It shouldn't be forgotten that when Lenin was in power he essentially decriminalised homosexuality and made it legal for openly homosexual men or women to be politicians. That's progressive for its time.

Proudhon - Hideous homophobe.

Marx - Probably not, since he was a Fourerist on the question of patriarcy.

Engels - Possible, but no evidence.

Bakunin - Anti-semitic people do tend to be homophobes, but for stated reasons Bakunin might be an exception.

Lenin - Russia did decriminalize homosexuality, but there was a real movement which pushed for it. I don't think he was a rabid homophobe but basically his position on sexuality amounted to claiming Bebel had writted all that was to be said on this issue, and there was no reason to keep going on about it. Overall, he was conservative against the radical anti-patriarchal proletarian currents.

Rosa - Not a homophobe, the German party in general was quite progressive on this question.

Stalin - Hideous homophobe, recriminalized homosexuality.

Trotsky - Most probably not a homophobe.

Tito - Hideous homophobe.

Hoxha - Hideous homophobe.

Proudhon - homophobe
Marx - backwards view but no hate
Engels - backwards view but no hate
Bakunin - I dinnie ken
Lenin - No
Rosa - No
Stalin - backwards view but no hate
Trotsky - I dinnie ken
Tito - don't like him but I do believe he tried to make homosexuality accepted
Hoxha - a bit of a homophobe
Mao - some backwards view but no hate at all (ie. It will go away as capitalism goes (which is not true, we now know this))
Fidel - backwards views at first but changed them
Che - some backwards views, never had the chance to change them

I think everything is said about most of the mentioned people, but I'd like to add something about Tito, probably because I like talking about Yugoslavia. It's a common trait.

The Yugoslav partisans executed male homosexuals in the army, because they considered homosexuality a, you guessed it, bourgeois deviation. I don't know of any civilian executions though, albeit they might have happened. Female homosexuality was never considered to be a problem.

Homosexuality was officially banned in 1959 and gay people were sometimes even publicly shamed during the 1950s. It all kinda cooled in the next decade and after the 1974 Constitution passed and the federal republics got more independence, SR Slovenia, SR Croatia, SR Montenegro and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina decriminalized homosexuality after urges from the republican medical chambers. I don't know how Tito felt about any of that, but the fact that he allowed (and probably ordered) executions of LGBT people and the criminalization of homosexuality means that he was hardly "trying to make homosexuality acceptable", as the poster above claims.

Later on in the 1980s homosexuality became ever more acceptable, even though homophobia of course remained at high levels. There were even attempts by the League of Communists to create a gay section in the late 80s but it failed for various reasons.

Well that's alright then, I mean imagine how bad gay people would have had it if homosexuality had been criminalised due to intentional hatred.

"A bit". I dread to think who would qualify as more than "a bit" homophobic then, Khomeini?

He certainly seems to have avoided the subject, even when he worked with gay and homophilic people like, respectively, Chicherin and Bonch-Bruevich. And the American SWP, which he worked closely with, basically treated homosexuality like a personal pathology. So I think Trotsky should be criticised for a lack of attention to the issue.

Except Marx did no such thing. The closest you're going to get is Engels complaining that if gay rights catch on their own arseholes won't be safe. When it came to actual political action, rather than personal correspondence between close friends, the Marxist group defended the chief of the Lassalleans when he was disbarred because he was caught with another man. I think that counts more than off-colour jokes.

Where do you get this information from? Do you just state your opinion as fact?


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Bakunin wasn't an anti-Semite.


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Bakunin was one of the most prominent anti-semites in the history of the Left, and in a pathological sense. That means he took it beyond a mere personal disdain of Jews.

"This whole Jewish world, comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now, at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other... This may seem strange. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found."

- Mikhail Bakunin

The key of anti-Semitism was never that Jews are dumb or ugly; it ever was that Jews are powerful and evil, often economically powerful. Bakunin's statement fits in with this.

For Comrade Jacob:

https://libcom.org/history/gay-gulag

Yawn.

This is attributed to Bakunin from what text?

That is simply a lie.