Misogyny is Revisionism Part 3: In Defense of Feminism

Feminism has become the staple bête noire for many on the left today. It has become fashionable for many self-proclaimed communists to denounce feminism as either bourgeois, a form of identity politics, or both. Many of these assertions rest on deliberate misreadings of the giants of Marxist feminism, as well as more superficial semantic arguments. And no more strain of feminism is more thoroughly thrashed and maligned by the so-called “woke” left than radical feminism, which is denounced on the above assertions to an even more vicious and ridiculous degree. The reality is that feminism is not only compatible with Marxism, but is indispensable to Marxism. Without the liberation of women, there can be no successful socialist revolution. Lenin famously stated that “There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real ‘freedom’ as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants.”[1] But for the crude class reductionists who worship at the altar of workerism this point falls on intentionally deaf ears. While the first two parts in this series were more theory-focused, this final chapter is more polemical than theoretical, aiming to re-affirm the indispensability of feminism to the revolutionary socialist project.

The claim that feminism is bourgeois was first popularized by the International Communist League, more popularly known as the Spartacist League, famous for their “revolutionary” defense of rapist filmmaker Roman Polanski, and the sex club NAMBLA.[2] The equally noxious Socialist Equality Party, also famous for its defense of rapists, as well as snitch-jacketing against “Stalinist spies”, similarly denounce feminism as bourgeois. Both organizations claim they support not feminism, but “women’s liberation”. While these two sects are not very influential in of themselves on the left as a whole, their anti-feminist, pro-“women’s liberation” line has been picked up by many so-called leftists, mostly men. To justify these positions, Alexandra Kollontai’s The Social Basis of the Woman Question is cited, but what these arguments miss is that Kollontai was not denouncing feminism as a whole, but bourgeois feminism. Kollontai, along with her contemporaries Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, pushed for the radicalization and evolution of feminism; just as communism represented the culmination of Enlightenment radicalism, they sought to create a feminism that would represent the ideological pinnacle of the struggle for women’s liberation, as well as a guide to action for working class women. What these revolutionary women made recognized was that while there are issues that unite all women, cross-class collaborationism will ultimately hurt the feminist cause, not advance it, because the bourgeois feminists will ultimately side with their economic class. This is very different from a totalistic denunciation of feminism as an ideology. All this talk of “women’s liberation not feminism” is just semantic obfuscation; what it really does is disguise the discomfort many leftist men feel surrounding a revolutionary movement exclusively for women. These revolutionary women did not theorize, organize, and agitate to make men feel more comfortable, but liberate international proletariat, especially the working women of the world.

The other charge that feminism is a form of identity politics is another example of this kind of disingenuous semantic and ideological obfuscation. As discussed in the first part of this series, woman is not an identity, but a material state of being. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels explained how the advent of private property and its concentration in male hands, led to the domination of women by men for the purpose of exploiting their reproductive labor so that property could be passed down from the father to the son. Patriarchy and class exist in a symbiosis with one another, the one impossible without the other. And capitalism, despite allowing women to make some gains, still needs to maintain control of women’s reproductive labor to ensure the continuation of the proletarian class. Patriarchy also serves the function of giving working class men an “outlet” for their aggression; rather than directing their rage at the system that exploits them, they are encouraged to direct their rage at women. But again, this is not because woman is an “identity”. A large part of this rage men direct at women is sexual exploitation; prostitution, pornography, sexual slavery. (See Part 2 for a more detailed exploration of the sexual exploitation of women by patriarchy and capitalism.) Female biology, the state of being female, and of having a female body is inseparable from this oppression and exploitation. Thomas Sankara said of this double oppression of women:

“Women’s fate is bound up with that of an exploited male. However, this solidarity must not blind us in looking at the specific situation faced by womenfolk in our society. It is true that the woman worker and simple man are exploited economically, but the worker wife is also condemned further to silence by her worker husband. This is the same method used by men to dominate other men! The idea was crafted that certain men, by virtue of their family origin and birth, or by ‘divine rights’, were superior to others.”[3]

Being born female is a life sentence to, at “best”, second class citizenship, and, at worst, a life full of the worst kind of slavery and exploitation. Women make up not a class, but a caste; it is possible to move out of the class one belongs to, but caste is something one is born into and can never escape. Feminism aims at the emancipation of the female caste; it is not some kind of abstract identitarian movement. We must ask, would those who denounce feminism as identity politics also say the same thing about black liberation, or national liberation movements? Certainly some will, but one has to suspect these would be a minority. If anything, the cult of the ideal “worker” worshipped by the class reductionist left is an example of actual identity politics, the way it fetishizes and elevates a kind of archetypal industrial worker as being the symbol of the working class. This kind of crude class reductionism poses a far greater danger to the left than feminism ever can, even if feminism were an example of “identity politics”. Again, these denunciations serve more to conceal the discomfort of leftist men than anything else. Working class men, and leftist men are still men, and unless they actively combat patriarchal-capitalist socialization, they are going to be doing more to support the status quo than the revolution. If solidarity with working class women cannot persuade them to support the feminist movement, then perhaps they ought to support it as it is ultimately in their interest to do so. Like the racist white worker who thinks himself superior to his black comrade, capitalism will not hesitate to sacrifice the chauvinist male worker on the pyre of profit and accumulation.

Leftist anti-feminism has really reached its peak in recent years with the rabid attacks on radical feminism and radical feminists. All the crass arguments hurled against feminism are also hurled against radical feminism, but the vitriol is taken to a whole higher level of viciousness. There are also other accusations reserved just for attacking radical feminism besides the usual ones; that radical feminism is elitist, white supremacist, “transphobic”, moralist, “whorephobic”, and even fascist! Again, these arguments show a shocking level of ignorance when it comes to history and theory. Like the Marxist feminists of the earlier twentieth century, radical feminism emerged not as an anti-leftist movement, but as a movement to push the left to its highest level of theoretical and revolutionary potential. Carol Hanisch, the radical feminist who, among other things, coined the phrase “the personal is political”, and organized the 1968 Miss America protests, said in a speech that the radical feminist movement she helped to found and develop was inspired by Mao and the Cultural Revolution. In the same speech, she said:

“To me the Cultural Revolution seems a continuation of the Revolution: a means to make it go deeper so that it didn’t get caught in the bureaucracy and complacency that sets in once power is won militarily and a new group of people—including opportunists in the revolutionary movement itself—have a stake in creating the new status quo. It’s a continuation of the process by which the masses of working people, including women and minorities, take total political, economic and social power. It’s the next step to achieving real communism; that is, a society completely devoid of class, including that of sex and race. We considered sexism and racism more than just a tradition of behavior or a bad or ignorant habit. Being materialists (in the Marxist sense), we asked, ‘Who benefits?’”[4]

Other radical feminists like Shulamith Firestone and Andrea Dworkin sought to apply dialectical materialism exclusively to understanding the oppression and exploitation faced by women. Rather than giving into “biological determinism”, or “sexual fascism”, as their critics claimed, and still claim, they built upon the work of Engels, Kollontai, and others and deepened it; their analyses did for patriarchy what Marx did for capitalism. We owe much of the newfound understanding of pre-patriarchal human society, and “lost” women’s history to their diligent analysis and research. The radical feminist frustration with much of the left was not, and should not be considered an expression of anti-leftist sentiment, but understood for what it really was, a deep-seated frustration with the chauvinism and entitlement exhibited by many male leftists, as well as the domination of leftist groups by these men, and the way women in these groups were very often silenced and abused (something that still happens today, as shown by the rape “scandals” in the UK Socialist Workers Party, and in the Australian section of the Committee for a Workers’ International). And just like Marx is constantly subjected to ridiculous attacks by people who have never read him, so are the radical feminists (the erroneous claim that Dworkin said “all sex is rape” is one of the most popular of these distortions). Except radical feminists are not just being attacked by the right, the way Marx is, but also by the left. What it really shows is that the more direct an attack on existing power structures is, the more wildly insane and savage the counter-attack.

At the end of the day, anti-feminist “leftists” simply betray an utter lack of understanding of both revolutionary socialist theory and practice. Every revolutionary socialist has recognized that for the revolution to succeed, women need to be mass mobilized; even after the socialist republic has been established, this mobilization must continue and deepen for socialism to take root and flourish. Women are more than decoration for the socialist revolution, they must be active participants in every aspect of building the socialist society. Mao and Castro were especially astute at recognizing this; both China (at least until the Dengist era) and Cuba have been active proponents of women’s liberation in all spheres of society. Marx himself said, “Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex…”[5] This statement can and should also be applied to socialist organizations; the most effective socialist groups are the ones in which women are not just active at every level, but equal and valued contributors to the organization’s development and practice. Those “socialists” who disregard, undervalue, or outright reject feminism do so at their own peril.

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[1] Lenin, VI. "Soviet Power and the Status of Women." Marxist Internet Archive. Marxist Internet Archive, 2002. Web. 06 July 2017.

[2] "Feminism vs. Marxism: Origins of the Conflict." International Communist League (Fourth International). Women and Revolution, 10 June 2011. Web. 06 July 2017. The "Spart's" key anti-feminist manifesto.

[3] Sankara, Thomas. "7 Thomas Sankara Quotes about Women." MsAfropolitan. N.p., 25 Nov. 2011. Web. 06 July 2017.

[4] Hanisch, Carol. "Impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the Women's Liberation Movement." Carolhanisch.org. Carol Hanisch, 1996. Web. 06 July 2017.

[5] Marx: Letters to Dr Kugelmann, Marxist Lib. 17 (NY, International Pub., 1934), letter of December 12, 1868, p.83.

Misogyny is Revisionism Part 1: On the Left's "Woman" Problem

The dialectics of idealism masquerading as dialectical materialism.

The Marxist left finds itself confronted by three insidious big lies that threaten the revolutionary and emancipatory foundation of the Marxist project, all related to undermining women’s liberation; they are:

1. Transwomen are women.

2. Sex work is work.

3. Feminism is bourgeois.

Misogyny in its many forms has long been a challenge for the left; not just the misogyny of the reactionary right, but misogyny coming from within the left itself. But it has not been until recently that this leftist misogyny has sought to portray itself as being inherently progressive. By engaging in revisionism of the most blatant kind, reactionary elements within the left have managed to posit themselves as the agents of progress. Much has already been written about the harms caused by these three lies, but no attempt has yet to be made to debunk them from a solidly Marxist standpoint. That is what we are out to accomplish here; to demonstrate definitively that these big lies are not just regressive, but inherently revisionist and anti-Marxist to the core.

The first of these three big lies, “Transwomen are women”, might well be the most damaging, because it directly contradicts the heart of the Marxist method: dialectical materialism. There are two main definitions used by proponents of transgenderism to explain their narrative. The first is that gender is an identity; the state of being a man or a woman (or any one of the other numerous “gender identities”) stems not from biological sex (to the extent that transactivists acknowledge the existence of biological sex), but from an internal identity, i.e. personal feelings, personal consciousness. The second definition says that transpeople are not really the sex they physically are, but the sex they say they are, because they really have “male” or “female” brains. Both of these definitions are rooted in the personal, not the material. One of the patron saints of queer theory, Judith Butler, says:

“It’s one thing to say that gender is performed and that is a little different from saying gender is performative. When we say gender is performed we usually mean that we’ve taken on a role or we’re acting in some way and that our acting or our role-playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world. To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.”[1]

Though queer theory is a postmodernist philosophy, its roots go far deeper than just postmodernism; rather, this statement of Butler’s is an example of the dialectics of idealism. Marxism, as a philosophy, was formed in reaction to the idealist dialectics of the Young Hegelians. The dialects of idealism posit that reality flows from consciousness. Marx, on the other hand, argued “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”[2] That is, it is not our thoughts that shape material reality, but material reality that shapes our thoughts. In fact, Marx’s first major work, The German Ideology, is exclusively dedicated to explaining this.

So what is the materialist definition of gender? And how does the embrace of the idealist definition under the guise of Marxism harm the Marxist aim of women’s liberation? The foundational Marxist text dealing with the oppression of women is Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. According to Engels, while there has always existed a sexual division of labor in human society, it is not until the rise of private property that this division becomes hierarchical. Before the rise of private property, society was organized under what was called “mother right”, i.e. a person’s family is traced through their mother, given the difficulty of identifying with certainty the father in primitive communist society. But because private property grew out of male labor, and became concentrated in male hands, mother right gave way to “father right”. In order to bequeath his property to his son, the father needed to know with certainty who his sons were. This meant controlling the reproductive labor of the female sex, and its subordination to male supremacy; thus the advent of patriarchy. In Chapter II of Origin of Family Engels calls the overthrow of mother-right “…the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.”[3] Note that Engels here is dealing with sex, with biology. Women are not oppressed because of some abstract gender identity, but because of their sex. Class society and patriarchy, the two of which exist in a symbiosis, need to control women’s reproductive labor to sustain themselves. To put it more bluntly, they need to control the means of reproduction. Thus, women’s oppression has its origin in material reality.

But we have not yet dealt with the concept of gender. In the current queer theory dominated discourse, sex and gender are increasingly become conflated to the point that they are being used as synonyms for one another. Engels analysis of patriarchy is in many ways incomplete, but it forms the basis of future materialist explorations of sex and gender. The second-wave feminists who developed much of the thought around gender did not revise these fundamentals, but expanded on them, the opposite of what today’s revisionists are doing. Gender, according to the radical feminist Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, is “the value system that prescribes and proscribes forms of behaviour and appearance for members of the different sex classes, and that assigns superior value to one sex class at the expense of the other.”[4] Gender is therefore not the same thing as biological sex, but a kind of parasite grafted on top of biological sex to maintain the current sexual hierarchy, and ensure continued male control over reproductive labor. Gender non-conforming, as well as homosexual, men and women are therefore “exiled” from their gender community not because of some abstract identity, but because they do not fulfill their proscribed functions as members of their sex class; they are essentially class traitors. Intersex people, which form a distinct material category, are also lumped into this community of “exiles” because they too are unable to fulfill the goals of the patriarchal sexual hierarchy. Such communities of exiles have existed throughout history, and continue to exist to this day in all parts of the world, from the hijra in India to the two-spirited people of the Native Americans to the contemporary shunning and violence directed at gender non-conforming individuals. But to reiterate, none of this has to do with identity, but with the material structuring of class society.

While transactivists have started to turn against the biomedical explanation for transgenderism, it is very much alive and well in the medical and psychological community. Victorian-era theories about “brain sex” that would have earned the ire of Marx and Engels are now making a comeback. At best, these theories are chimerical pseudoscience which have not even come close to being conclusively proven in any legitimate scientific study. The standards by which gender dysphoria is diagnosed falls back on the constructed tropes of masculinity and femininity already discussed. Such theories risk misconstruing gender roles as being rooted in nature as opposed to constructions that reinforce ruling class control. Rather than being seen as the disease, dysphoria should be seen as the symptom of the sexual hierarchy. The pressures of gendered socialization are ubiquitous, and begin at birth. Very often we are not aware of the subtle forms socialization exerts upon us. For those who reject this socialization, it follows that they would experience levels of extreme discomfort and anguish. Gendered socialization is not just some abstract phenomena, but is, again, literally grafted onto us. Under this system of socialization, the penis becomes more than just the male sex organ, but the symbol of male aggression and supremacy, in the same way the vagina becomes the symbol of female inferiority and subjugation. Sensitive individuals who struggle against this socialization often hate their bodies, but not because their bodies are somehow “wrong”, but because of what they are drilled into believing their bodies are. What they suffer from is the inability to tear away the curtain that has been placed in front of material reality and to see reality in an objective manner. The fields of medical and psychological science are not immune from the influence of the ruling class. This is especially the case in the world of psychology, where a method of analysis is employed that isolates the individual from the wider society around them, preferring to view internal struggle as the result of some defect as opposed to the result of material and social forces exerted on the individual.

While capitalism has broken down certain elements of patriarchy, and allowed for women to make some gains, it has not dismantled patriarchy completely. Capitalism, being a class system, still needs to retain control of the means of reproduction. For example, laws that restrict access to abortion and contraceptives, while having negative repercussions for all women, have the most negative impact on poor, working-class women. These laws may be cloaked in the terminology of moralism, but have a far more base logic; they ensure the continued production of future proletarians for the benefit of the capitalist machine.

By shifting the definition of “woman” away from a materialist one to an idealistic one, we lose the ability to define and fight the causes of women’s oppression. In its most extreme form it erases women as a class, and makes it impossible to talk about patriarchy as an existing force. Why, then, are Marxists, who are supposed to be dialectical materialists embracing a set of ideas the very opposite of dialectical materialism? To answer this, we need to look at the nature of patriarchy; it is a system that predates capitalism. As already stated above, patriarchy and class exist in a symbiosis with one another. The one cannot be eliminated without the elimination of the other. Overthrowing capitalism is not the same as overthrowing class. As Mao pointed out, class dynamics still exist in the socialist society, and require continuous vigilance and combat on the part of revolutionaries. This is why many socialist states still restricted women’s rights to certain degrees, such as the draconian anti-abortion laws of Ceausescu’s Romania. All males benefit in some way from patriarchy, even males in a socialist society. It therefore follows that socialist males fighting capitalism also benefit from patriarchy. While men and women may be in solidarity with one another as workers, working class men also belong to the male sex class, a class that predates the existence of the modern working class. Class allegiances run deep. This is why so many socialist and “feminist” men are quick to defend and even endorse the violent language and actions perpetrated by some gender non-conforming men against the female sex class, regardless of how these gender non-conforming men identify themselves. This is not to deny that gender non-conforming men are discriminated against, and face harassment and violence themselves, but even as exiles from the male sex-class, they still benefit from some of the privileges awarded to this sex class. Note that I do not use privilege in the manner it’s currently used by the regressive left, i.e. as some abstract notion that needs to be “checked”. Rather, it is an actually existing force that must be combated, just as white revolutionaries must actively combat white supremacy, and first world revolutionaries must actively combat “their” state’s imperialism.

Opportunism and the “fear” of being on the “wrong side of history” are also driving forces behind this embrace of revisionism. The Anglophone left, especially in the United States, given its weakness in the overall political arena, has long sought to be seen as “acceptable” and “polite”, and is often eager to jump on any bandwagon it believes can advance it. This desire to be accepted also drives the fear. It is true that communists have made serious errors in judgment in the past, but that is not an excuse to rebel against core philosophies and hastily embrace ideas and movements without fully analyzing their beliefs and goals. This is not to say that communists should not be on the forefront in defending gender non-conforming individuals. A thoroughgoing socialist revolution requires that these existing oppressive structures be cast aside. But it is possible to defend gender non-conforming people without embracing misogynistic pseudoscience and revisionism.

Women are not just oppressed, but thoroughly exploited. Working class women make up what is possibly the most thoroughly exploited section of human society. By embracing philosophies that not only erase their ability to define and explain their exploitation, but also deny them the agency to organize as a revolutionary class, these “Marxists” have proven that they are in direct contradiction to Marxist philosophy and ideas. They are engaging in revisionism.

In the next part, we will examine the second big lie plaguing the left today, the notion that “sex work is work”.

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[1] “Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender.” YouTube. Big Think, 06 June 2011. Web. 29 June 2017.

[2] Marx, Karl. “Economic Manuscripts: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” Marxists Internet Archive. Progress Publishers, n.d. Web. 29 June 2017.

[3] Engels, Frederick. “Origins of the Family — Chapter 2 (III).” Marxists Internet Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 June 2017.

[4] Reilly-Cooper, Rebecca. “Gender.” Sex and Gender. N.p., 06 Sept. 2015. Web. 29 June 2017. Emphases present in original text.