Communist Party policy supports actual women

[Oldstyle]

Seems this wonderful policy was passed at their 55th Congress. And the Morning Star is about the only consistently pro-women / anti self-ID paper around. See you at the next meeting comrades.

KataraJean: their problem is with the concept of identity politics, and the concept of identity, in a way. They may or may not support rights for various ethnicities and races, lesbians, or any other group you can think of, but they don't see that sense of group identity as an adequate basis for politics or thinking about human social relations. They don't necessarily attribute it to patriarchy either - typically they see the fundamental social relationship as the proletariat and the capitalists - the latter being those who own the means of production, the former those who aren't. As I understand it, women are seen as a real group in that they do have an actual physical or material instantiation that affects their place in the class struggle. It's not about some sort of self-concept.

In a Marxist utopia, their wouldn't be a need for an identity like being black or gay. Those categories would be irrelevant. But being a women with those reproductive capacities would always be real and require consideration.
Ultimately, this is why Marxists find themselves in the same camp as radical feminists and Christians on this - they all believe strongly in the reality of the material world.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) are a tiny splinter group, widely despised as tankies, who make Trots look like liberal moderates. There's a handful of them, and they go everywhere with a giant flag with Lenin's face on. The SWP tend to consider them embarrassing weirdo extremists.

The SWP tend to consider them embarrassing weirdo extremists.

Oh, the irony.

Ah of course, because identity is about the self, whereas communism is about the whole and as you say, goosefoot the relations of power which need to be challenged are economic and social in Marxist terms. Thank you.

Now that is a good question how the former Communist states viewed those who did not conform to traditional views of marriage and the family - I know that single mothers were supported with childcare and there was easier access to divorce and abortion than in the west. But what about homosexuality? I think that was also seen as undermining the state because of not producing children to support the state but I may be wrong.

I am of course going off at a tangent, but the points relating Christian groups and Communists on material reality are interesting.

They are not Tankies. They are Marxist, and they adhere more closely to the writings and theories of Lenin. Tankies are Stalinist twats. SWP have a questionable history on women's rights.

As someone who has read and written quite a lot on Marxist politics I agree that a materialist analysis is that the neoliberal economy creates a neoliberal culture where post modern ideology has marauded as theory.

I think Cuba is historically hostile to (male) homosexuality. Its one of the great conundrums of the left: can one support Cuba's noble work whilst they're banging up gays.

DisrespectfulAdultFemale said
"I am glad to see the Communist Party standing up for women."

My aunt, who lost 15 members of her extended family, including three daughters and two sisters, to their ideology may disagree.

They are not Tankies. They are Marxist, and they adhere more closely to the writings and theories of Lenin.

This. Nothing to do with Tankies.

Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which analyses female oppression as unpaid labour in the nuclear family and the desire of bourgeois property-owning men to pass on their property only to their own offspring.

The SWP tend to consider them embarrassing weirdo extremists

Pot. Kettle. Black.

There are lots of marxist influenced second wavers. Unfortunately my library is packed up at the moment, but I'm thinking Sheila Rowbotham, Juliet Mitchell, Christine Delphy, Zillah Eisenstein just for starters. Part of the materialist critique is around domestic and child-rearing labour and who does it. Some argue that this needs to be made public - i.e. communal, others that in individual households men should do 50%. I often think that radical feminists overlook this important issue and are too focussed on issues involving sex.

YetAnotherSpartacus - yes. I'm interested in exploring how the social environment has changed for the better for women (divorce, acceptability of single parenthood, no marital rape, etc) but the economic environment has not kept up. Hence austerity being visited overwhelmingly on working class single mothers. I want to incorporate social class (and relationship to production) into my feminism.

I’m a conservative Far right wing Christian fundamentalist Communist apparently

Hence austerity being visited overwhelmingly on working class single mothers. I want to incorporate social class (and relationship to production) into my feminism

I'm quite interested in the way that so many women fall into the dependency trap - they prioritise his career, move for his career, work to put him through study, become the SAHP after the children, take flexible options or lower paid work etc. and explain away them doing 80% or more of the DL even if they are working FT. When challenged they say 'it was easier that way' or 'it made sense' or 'I wanted to'. So many women here talk about the protection of marriage, but the real protection lies in being economically self-sufficient. I think there are other issues too - in my middle-age I am still gobsmacked at the way men are given preferential treatment in the workplace - and often supported by women who coo over them and treat them like naughty boys or prodigal sons. This is also about economic advantage and disadvantage. You might like some of the authors I suggested. If I think of more I'll add them.

Today in "Marxists understand material reality exists" shocker! Pity that the majority of the left is currently firmly committed to believing in gender fairies instead.

You are welcome to become communists, most people would not even think about considering this as an option given the record of communist regimes.

Point.
^
^
^
Head.

Do we count famines and imperialist wars in the death count caused by capitalism?

No?

Why not?

Now that is a good question how the former Communist states viewed those who did not conform to traditional views of marriage and the family - I know that single mothers were supported with childcare and there was easier access to divorce and abortion than in the west. But what about homosexuality? I think that was also seen as undermining the state because of not producing children to support the state but I may be wrong.

I think the views on homosexuals in any given communist country have more to do with how the country's culture was before communism.

Russia is extremely homophobic today, but I never heard of any difference between West and East Germany.

After all, homosexuality only affects birth rates if you have strict monogamy, no contraception and no abortions.
Where women have bodily autonomy, birth rates depend on how many children women want.
So some heterosexual women won't have children because they don't want any, and some lesbian women will have children because they want to.

You are welcome to become communists, most people would not even think about considering this as an option given the record of communist regimes.

It always depends on how bad things get.

Sure, China has its problems, but hey, at least the communists abolished foot-binding.

One can also disagree on whether communism has ever been properly implemented, what with every communist regime consisting of a handful of privileged individuals ... but that's not an argument I want to start on here.

The CPGB(M-L) statement is problematic because it is against transgenderism for bad reasons. They would probably also view women’s rights and gay rights as diversions from the class struggle.

On the other hand the SWP’s support for trans nonsense now is really weird because they spent most of the 1990s opposing postmodernist garbage and their guru Alex Callinicos wrote an entire book about it.

Post modernist 'theories' are nothing more than ideologies. They have no explanatory value, and these ideologies serve to create false differences, subjective identities which do create fractures within the class and act as a diversion from class politics. That's the whole point.

The SWP were wrong on Syria (I stopped listening at this point) they are wrong on transgender. They are probably aware that to swim against the tide means haemorrhaging more support. It's the latest hobby horse taken up by the left. ...I blame Laclau

Lastly it is the ideological apparatus that supports capitalism that creates false consciousness, subjective identity politics, carves up class and reduces politics to a game of discrimination top trumps. If all inequalities can be overcome under communism then differences between people have no political significance and become a moot point entirely. These regimes that people point to were never communist. In all these examples the discrimination against groups occurs because it served the interests of the state. A state that is state socialist. As an example, Europe and the USA was state socialist as was the USSR and China post 45. The difference between them was not economic but ideological. So in the 'capitalist' west the ideologies were liberal, and liberal ideology serves the interests of capital. Liberal theories are based upon rights which are not about economic equality but about subjective identity and autonomy to act, transact and make choices that accord with the false distinction between public and private spheres. Even the feminist slogan "the personal is political" is a reaction to this false divide but might also be seen in light of the way liberal ideals are given a resurgence through post modernist ideologies about individuals, their subjective experience and identities.

I'm aware that feminist argument will probably be that the personal lived experience is a material reality. And I agree. However the personal is subjective because it lacks theoretical categories. The argument collapses precisely because it falls into the liberal post modernist trap of having no explanatory value only a descriptive value. That's not to say I'm not a feminist. I am. And I think the emancipation of women should be central to class politics......it's a question of how?