Titolo 4

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For centuries, the stability of class society has established a solid point of support in the family: that is
to say, on the enslavement of women to men. This form of slavery is far older than capitalism. This male
domination and the subservient position of women in society and the family is now being questioned,
along with all the other barbarous institutions that we have inherited from the past. The senile degeneration
of capitalism leads to a serious deterioration of the conditions of all workers. But it imposes particularly
harsh conditions on women and young people. Many find themselves denied access to adequate work
and housing. Single parents and their children are condemned to poverty and endless hardship. It is
possible to judge the level of civilisation of a given culture by its treatment of women, children and old people. But
civilisation in the proper term. Otherwise, it is bourgeois. Women cannot be expected to put to one
side their immediate, pressing demands and await the arrival of socialism. The victory of the Socialist
revolution is unthinkable without the day-to-day struggle for advance under capitalism. Marxists must
fight for even the smallest reforms that can serve to improve the living standards of the working people
under capitalism for two reasons. In the first place, we are fighting to defend the workers against exploitation.
Secondly, it is only through the experience of day-to-day struggle that the class can acquire a sense of its own power, to
develop its organisational strength and raise its collective consciousness to the level demanded by history. To
demand, as sectarians and dogmatists have done, that the workers should set aside their day-to-day
demands “in the interest of the revolution” is the height of stupidity. Its Christianity.
It is an elementary truth of Marxism that in any mass movement it is necessary to distinguish
carefully between the reactionary and progressive elements. On one side, fighting for emancipation and
on the other they demanded that there would be women only pickets and separate women only blocks
at the demonstration and wanted to allow only purple flags. The strike was supposed to be followed by
women only, with men taking their place at work – that is to say, acting as strike-breakers! This would
have severely restricted the scope of the movement on March 8 and rendered a general strike utterly
impossible. This was completely against the interests of the movement and clearly reflected the narrow
outlook and reactionary and divisive policies of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois feminists.
Here we have a very clear analogy, which is the attitude of Marxists to the national question. Do
we support the demand for the independence of Catalonia from the Spanish state? Yes, we do. But we
do so, while explaining that on the capitalist basis, independence will solve nothing. all questions – the
question of national oppression, the struggle for women’s emancipation, the fight against racism – have
a class character. Yet, not class in general. But an antagonistic class character. Otherwise, it is bourgeois.
That is the fundamental dividing line that separates Marxism from nationalism, feminism and every other
manifestation of the struggle against oppression. Dühring that this so-called “opposition to dogmatism”
was merely a pretext for people who wished to replace the revolutionary content of Marxism with the
opportunist policy of “small deeds”, a trend that later crystallised into Menshevism. In the past, when
the bourgeoisie was still capable of playing a progressive role, it had a revolutionary ideology. It produced
great and original thinkers: Locke and Hobbes, Rousseau and Diderot, Kant and Hegel, Adam Smith and
David Ricardo, Newton and Darwin. Yet there were already locked into bourgeois limits. All of them. But
the intellectual production of the bourgeoisie in the period of decline displays all the evidence of advanced
senile decay. This is no accident. The present epoch is characterised by ideological confusion, apostasy,
disintegration and dispersal. Under these conditions a mood of pessimism seizes the intelligentsia, which
yesterday saw capitalism as a never-ending source of careers and the guarantee of a comfortable living
standard. However, the root of the problem is: the centralisation and concentration of capital, the
division of labour, and the further rift between society and nature.
The response of the academia to the crisis is: a rejection of revolution in favour of “small deeds”
(like pettifogging arguments over words and “narratives”), a retreat into subjectivity, a denial of the class
struggle, elevating “my” particular oppression over “yours”, which in turn leads to an increasing
compartmentalisation, and ultimately atomisation of the movement. The general moods of society can
also penetrate the working class and its organisations. In periods where the class is not generally moving,
the pressures of the bourgeoisie and especially the petty bourgeoisie are intensified. The sole purpose of
these arguments is to divert the attention of the youth, cause the maximum confusion and to act as a
barrier to prevent the new generation from gaining access to Marxism. It is necessary to bear in mind
that the universities are heavily under the influence of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas. The universities are not
“temples of learning” but factories for the mass production of ideological defenders of capitalism.
Intersectionality and identity politics allowed the “left” intellectuals a convenient way of deserting the
class struggle and abandoning socialism, whilst continuing to pay lip service to “progressive causes”. For
example, Queer Theory can be traced to the wave of postmodernism and other idealist and subjectivist
ideas which developed as a reaction against Marxism in recent decades. The CIA was involved in covertly
supporting a number of “anti-totalitarian” left-wing publications, such as Partisan Review, Der Monat
(which published articles by Adorno and Arendt among others), Mundo Nuevo and so on. The common
theme running through these journals was a defence of the “intellectual” in contrast to the class struggle.
It was precisely from the hands of these intellectuals that the bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas
dominating the universities today arose. Foucault is seen as the father of Queer Theory. In their minds,
the class struggle was dissolved into an infinite series of small individual struggles with no common
characteristics. Insofar as they acknowledged the class struggle they disparaged the alleged
“backwardness” of the working class and called for a change in the “discourse” rather than a bold lead
from the cowardly leaders at the head of the movement. As we see from the CIA report, the ruling class,
far from feeling threatened by any of these “radical” vogue ideas, welcomed them wholeheartedly as
valuable tools in the ideological struggle against Marxism.
One of the most recent variants of identity politics to sweep the radical petty bourgeoisie is the
concept of intersectionality. This is not just a minor deviation or confusion by well-meaning young
people, but an entirely retrograde, reactionary and counter-revolutionary ideology that we must combat
with every means at our disposal. The ruling class has always striven to sow division in the working class,
following the age-old tactic of divide and rule. They use any means to turn one section of workers against
another: racism, the national question, language, gender or religion – every one of these has been used,
and is still being used, to divide the working class and to divert its attention away from the class struggle
between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. Abandoning the class point of view and playing the
game of the ruling class by putting what divides us above everything else, ignoring the roots of oppression
in class society, advancing the sectoral interests of this or that group to the detriment of the united class
struggle. Most people who are focused on particular forms of oppression tend to ignore or play down
the real basis of oppression, which is class society itself. They not only put the working class against itself,
but even increase the level of exploitation by moving the focus form causes to effects.
In an increasing number of cases university authorities and student unions, hiding behind
“political correctness”, identity politics and the alleged desire not to hurt the sensibilities of certain people,
are practising a policy of blatant discrimination and censorship, banning certain people from speaking –
not only racists and fascists, but also to an increasing degree, left-wingers. The same is happening with
the green pass. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois feminists, like the bourgeois nationalists, demand
categorically that the gender question must take precedence over all else, and that working class women must identify
themselves first and foremost with all other women, including, and above all, the “clever” bourgeois and petty
bourgeois women intellectuals who lord it over the feminist movement. While we will fight to defend
women’s rights, we are not prepared to subordinate ourselves to the leadership of bourgeois and petty
bourgeois women who are pursuing their own interests under the guise of fighting for the cause of “all
women.” But so-called “identity politics” is actually harmful to the cause of women, black Americans,
immigrants, indigenous people and LGBT people. It deepens racial divisions while claiming to bridge
them, throttles free speech and renders a rational debate impossible. Political demagogues and petty
bourgeois fanatics who substitute shrill denunciations for argument shout down anybody who dares
question their “political correctness”. Undoubtedly, there are numerous forms of oppression in addition
to class exploitation, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and so on. As Marxists we
acknowledge and fight against all forms of oppression. The problem with intersectionality is that it
emphasizes what divides us over what unites us, focusing on the infinite combinations of different forms
of oppression. But in spite of the multiple forms of oppression, there is one single cause: the
exploitation of labour force to pump surplus value.
Thus every separate segment is invited to assert our rights against your rights. The movement thus is
broken into smaller and smaller parts. Instead of fighting against the common enemy, every segment of
the oppressed is encouraged to focus on their own form of oppression and arguing against every other
segment of the oppressed. An effect of the current division of labour. In their view, women’s
oppression today is not a result of capitalist wage slavery, but a result of the use of discriminatory language
or of discriminatory structures in organisations. However, intersectionalists imagine they can build a pure
organisation that is purged of discriminatory behaviour, capable of creating a society free of
discrimination. They do not understand that any organisation will be under pressure from the society in
which it is built. The idealist conception also finds its way into the types of “reforms” that parts of this
movement put forward: “gender neutral language”, “gender neutral bringing up of children”, etc. By such
means the “intersectionalists” imagine that somehow the root of oppression is to be found in bad ideas
that can simply be “educated away”, a completely reformist and utopian conception. Feminists tend to
see patriarchy as a structure separate from that of class society, which leads to the inevitable conclusion
that the struggle for the emancipation of women is separate from that of emancipating the working class.
This is a reactionary and divisive idea, which is also present, albeit in a diluted form, among many who
call themselves Marxist feminists and socialist feminists. Feminism might best be defined by what it is
not: it does not give any answer as to how oppression arose and hence how it can be combated and
removed. Feminism implies that somehow it is possible to remove oppression of women before
removing the root cause of this oppression: capitalism and class society in general. Therefore it makes
no sense to declare ourselves Marxist feminist. However, the prior condition for a successful struggle in
the workplace is the unity of men and women workers as workers. The fundamental line of demarcation
is that Marxism explains society in class terms, not in terms of gender.
In the true spirit of postmodernist “narrative” that substitutes the Word for the Deed, endless
time has been wasted in certain countries where people who describe themselves as “Lefts” and even
“Marxists” perform verbal acrobatics to twist language, neutralising masculine and feminine forms,
ending up with mutations like “compañer@s” in Spanish, “compagn*” in Italian, and so on. This kind
of playing with words does nothing whatsoever to advance the struggle for the emancipation of women,
black people or anybody else. It is tokenism of the crudest and most ridiculous kind. The postmodernist
obsession with language puts the whole question upside down. Changing the language will not change
one iota the real fact of oppression. To think so reveals a completely idealistic approach. Language
changes and evolves, reflecting changes in the real world, but the converse is patently untrue. Are not
words that make history, but history that produce words. Otherwise we0ll do a backflip into
Christianity: God sad ‘light’, and light was.
Whether one likes it or not, sex in the animal world (including human animals) is a normal method
of reproduction. Asexual reproduction exists in the animal world, for example in earthworms and certain
fishes. But it disappears with the development of evolution and is totally absent amongst mammals. Sex
is not something that people have consciously determined or invented. It was a product of evolution.
The idea that sex can be determined artificially by human volition is both arbitrary and philosophically
and scientifically false. The fundamental sexual division is between male and female. This is naturally
determined by the reproductive process. This in turn carries within it the germ of the division of labour,
which at a certain stage becomes the basis of class divisions in society. The subjugation of women to
men, expressed in patriarchal family relations, coincides with the beginnings of class society, and will only
finally be eradicated after the abolition of class society itself. One can imagine oneself to be anything one
pleases. But in the end, one is compelled to accept material reality over the mental meanderings of
philosophical idealism. Among the innumerable weird and wonderful variants of Queer theory (we
should not really dignify this as a theory at all) there appears to be a common thread: firstly, it presents
gender (and even sex) as a purely social construct, denying all biological and material aspects. The next
step is to create in the imagination an almost infinite variety of genders, from which everyone is free to
take their pick. And this happens because we produce commodities, rather than use values. And
in late imperialism exchange value – the social construct! – has progressively overtaken use
value, up to the point of erasing fiat money, create fluctuating exchange rates, heading towards
crypto-currentisation of the economy, and by putting a ‘best before’ date on money.
Modern science enables people to change their sex and this should be available to any person that requires
it. It goes without saying that we are totally opposed to any form of discrimination and intolerance
towards transgender people. Nor do we have any objection to anyone identifying as they please. However,
by presenting this as a means of changing society, we end up with the idea (highly convenient for the
ruling class) that emancipation is purely a question of personal lifestyle choice. We see the negative effects
of this kind of thing in the ugly splits and bitter feuding between some radical feminists and some trans-
right activists. Such developments cannot be said to serve the fight against oppression in any sense, shape
or form. They are thoroughly reactionary and must be combatted. Precisely in what way the entry of
women into the boardrooms of banks helps the cause of women workers is not explained. Are women
bosses any kinder to their employees than male ones? The record is not very encouraging in this respect.
And just how the successes of Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel or Theresa May have helped the cause
of their “sisters” on the factory floor is a mystery that remains to be solved. As soon as the Bolshevik
Party took power in Russia in 1917 it carried out the most sweeping programme for the emancipation of
women in history, as well as the decriminalisation of homosexuality, far more advanced than anything
seen in the capitalist world in that period. The Bolsheviks demonstrated in practice that the overthrow
of capitalism was able to guarantee women and gays far more than any amount of abstract quibbling
about oppression in general. Marx wrote in a letter to Engels (17-18 September, 1879): “If people of this
kind from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first condition must be that they should not
bring any remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices with them but should wholeheartedly
adopt the proletarian outlook.”
Small mistakes in method, erroneous slogans and formulations, can develop into more serious
problems. As Lenin put it, “a single scratch can cause gangrene.” Decades of economic growth in the
advanced capitalist countries gave rise to an unprecedented degeneration of the mass organisations of
the working class. This isolated the revolutionary current, which everywhere was reduced to a small
minority. As Lenin explained, “before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all
draw firm and definite lines of demarcation.”