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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Morning Star/Mumsnet shout out

34 replies

MockneyReject · 03/01/2020 21:49

www.facebook.com/groups/CommunistPartySupporters/permalink/2733162856770110/

OP posts:
Newuser123123 · 04/01/2020 18:32

I wouldn't take much notice of what I say tbh, certainly not advocating communism as a means to women's liberation (although I do like Marx's writing)

I just really like the way gender is discussed in this way - I have a young left-wing friendship group who I am struggling to convince, I think they view me as a pearl clutcher, so this will help me articulate the argument to them.

Not everyone will feel the same way, I just felt it was helpful x

youkiddingme · 04/01/2020 22:21

What Uncompromisingwoman said

Thank you for sharing

moofolk · 07/01/2020 11:56

@TheTigersBride

There is a difference between Marxism as a social philosophy, ideal / ideological communism / socialism and actually existing Communist governments.

Socialism / Marxism is a structural, class based analysis of society which is why it fits with feminist analysis.

This does not mean that Stalin was a feminist. Men who rise to power are often bit really believers in the ideology they claim, but power hungry bastards; just look at the church, or abusive yoga teachers to see that.

Ideological socialists can see the class based oppression of women and how trans ideology is fundamentally at odds with challenging that.

moofolk · 07/01/2020 11:57

Often not really (not bit really!)

TheTigersBride · 07/01/2020 13:35

There is a difference between Marxism as a social philosophy, ideal / ideological communism / socialism and actually existing Communist governments

I was commenting on posts in this thread where Communism was being promoted as actually being good- not merely a theory- but thanks for the feministplaining.

Socialism / Marxism is a structural, class based analysis of society which is why it fits with feminist analysis

In your opinion. Given how useless this theoretical analysis is in practice I would not give it such weight.

Goosefoot · 07/01/2020 14:25

Marxism was never meant to be used to set up a government. It was meant to describe the movement of history, why societies look a certain way, and analyse what problems or contradictions would lead to social/economic failures. Marx also gave his views about how those problems would resolve, historically speaking, in the long term.

While many people may have some doubts about his predictions about how things would come to a state of rest, his class or analysis of the relations of groups is considered pretty widely to be very useful. Even if sometimes it may be applied in ways that aren't appropriate and he didn't intend. And similarly his criticisms of the contradictions of capitalism are considered to be quite strong - the big crash of 2008 can certainly be looked at in that light and it actually sparked something of a renewal of interest in Marx.

Attempts to create Marx's vision, which really make no sense in terms of his philosophy, are almost beside the point. Even if he is 100% right about how things will play out they could never work because the correct conditions haven't been met.

BlackForestCake · 08/01/2020 01:07

I am not really sure how you come to those conclusions Goosefoot. Marx was the one who said “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, but the point is to change it”. I’ve never heard anyone before argue that Marx didn’t want the socialist transformation of the world he wrote about to actually happen.

MoleSmokes · 08/01/2020 18:49

Thanks for posting that link MockneyReject

By a strange coincidence, last week a friend was bemoaning the fact that the guy who posted the Mumsnet link (Martin Levy) did not stand in the General Election as usual and was wondering if he was still around.

My mate does not do Facebook but at least I can tell him that Martin is still alive and kicking - and apparently lurks on Mumsnet! He's never going to believe me if I tell him that! Smile

Goosefoot · 08/01/2020 20:52

I’ve never heard anyone before argue that Marx didn’t want the socialist transformation of the world he wrote about to actually happen.

Marx was a sort of Hegelian. Hegel believed in something he called the World Spirit, a sort of impersonal god which revealed itself more and more over time through history.

Marx believed in a materialist version of this idea, over time, there was an interaction between classes or social groups that would play out and go through certain stages, until it finally was fully formed and reached a sort of ideal state. He called this, after Hegel, a dialectic. Each of these social or economic stages contained problems or contradictions that would create a sort of crises or collapse, and then there would be a reformation that solved or brought together the contradiction into a higher form of society. This would go on until you reached the highest form that did not contain any more contradictions.

Some of his discussion is of historical examples of these stages and how they are true to his theory, and his discussion of capitalism is about what he thinks the contradictions are that will cause its failure. And then he also discusses what the resolution of that will be and the final state.

But the thing is, this is a historical process, you can't just come up with the final stage without going through the others because they are all important. None of the attempts at establishing actual communist states really even correspond to what Marx wrote. All of them involved peasant societies doing mainly agricultural work for example whereas Marx said the final society would come out of an industrialised kind of economy. And that was to be about the proletariate, the actual people themselves, owning their own labour, and the disappearance of the capitalist class. Not about some sort of elite group trying to force that to happen through state ownership of capital. That's not a historical dialectic. And if its not a historical dialectic its not Marx.

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