Marxism and Gender Ideology (3) – Nothing without our body

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In reaction to the Cass Report in Britain there has been widespread denunciation of the ‘toxic’ debate around the transgender issue without specifying why this is.  There has also apparently been wide agreement that there needs to be better data to find out the effects of treatment of children and young people.. 

The second link above shows that the apparent agreement is a fiction and that the supporters of gender ideology, within and outside the NHS, have both no need for data and no need for a debate.  The report itself reveals that most of the NHS’s gender identity development service (Gids) refused to cooperate with the inquiry in providing evidence and that this was ideologically driven, i.e. they accepted gender identity ideology.

It is abundantly clear that the toxic debate is not going away any time soon because the supporters of gender identity ideology have made it plain that there is no debate to be had, and that data on clinical outcomes of those young people who have had puberty blockers, or cross-sex hormones or other surgical intervention is impermissible.  This, however, is only one reason for the toxic ‘debate’.

As we saw in the previous post, the shifting, imprecise and downright misleading use of definitions means that you get routine claims about the ‘right to change gender’ when what is meant is the ‘right to change sex’ which does not exist because it cannot be done.

The issue is not therefore about a ‘right to change sex’ but the social and political rights to be acquired from claiming to have one’s ‘true’ sex recognised, which is to be established not by any sort of health care, such as hormonal treatment or surgical intervention, but by accepting the view that one knows one’s identity better than anyone else and being a woman, for example, is just such an identity.  Something that a man can be if he puts his mind to it.

This requires the belief that one can be ‘born in the wrong body’, meaning that the ‘real’ and essential person exists as something separate from the body, which is akin to the religious idea of a soul, also separate from the body. In this way the claims of gender identity ideology are a religion for which data, or any other scientific evidence, is irrelevant.  For this ideology, denial of the quasi-religious nature of its claims means that the pretence must be made to objective validity but this must then involve denial of the means of validation.  Irrational claims give rise to irrational discourse which gives rise to the toxicity.

The shifting, imprecise and downright misleading use of words, including the word ‘gender’ adds a twist to the non-debate by making it impossible to consistently identify what is being claimed or denied.

Gender can, as well as meaning sex, also be understood as the expression of social norms associated with and based on one’s sex, such as the characteristic stereotyped attributes of femininity to be expressed by women and of masculinity to be expressed by men.  We have looked at some problems with this is the previous post but let us park these for the sake of this discussion.

Effeminate expression by men, by some gay men for example , has historically been disapproved of in many countries, with patterns of socialisation generally working to impose those characteristics considered masculine that would prevent or negate such expression.  Similarly, the phenomenon of masculinised women, such as in some lesbians, has also been frowned upon.  Regardless of the advances in gay and lesbian rights in some counties, this socialisation process continues and is still considered ‘normal’ with deviations from it being ‘abnormal’.

In real life, no one fits the pure stereotyped norms of femininity and masculinity.  It therefore makes no sense to use the term gender in the way employed by one socialist: that trans means ‘people who wish to live permanently in the gender identity polar opposite to that ascribed to the biological sex’.   No one’s gender is the polar opposite of their sex, while the free expression of one’s personality is a part of what socialism is about.  Gender norms are restricting, stifling and enforce rigid stereotypes that are regressive for both sexes and for the relations between them.  

Everyone expresses some combination of the characteristics that may be said to make up the ‘polar opposites’ of the social expression of one’s sex.  To claim that one is a ‘polar opposite’ in identity to one’s sex is therefore to define oneself in stereotypical and reactionary terms, so that to assert political claims on such grounds is also reactionary.

Gender identity ideology might think it avoids this by positing the idea of numerous genders, so that ‘polar opposite’ is not the only alternative to female and male, woman and man.  This involves the creation of multiple genders, and different sources will provide different numbers of them.  If you Google ‘how many genders are there’ you might find that there are either 3 or 4 or 68 nor 72 or the number is undefined.  The BBC once claimed to children that there were over 100.

Since one’s gender is determined by one’s sense of oneself there can be any number of self-definitions, each of which must be considered to be valid by this ideology, precisely because it is self-determined.  But purely subjective identities are paraded because they crave social recognition, validation and acceptance, (otherwise they remain in a private domain without validation etc.) so the assertion of such identities is a political question.

This ideology thereby becomes the only political position that asserts its legitimacy and authority on the basis of an unchallengeable declaration demanding immediate acceptance. However, this ‘first-person authority’ championed by gender identity ideologists (trans people know themselves better than anyone else so we should all accept what they say) excludes those who disagree (for example women who deny that they have any sort of gender identity).

Whatever about such claims to novel ‘genders’, the majority are either male or female, and since women are most vulnerable to the consequent results, claims that men can become (or always ‘really’ have been) women are the most contentious.  Transmen in some male-only settings are at greater risk than the men they will encounter but this cannot be said for transwomen (men) entering women-only spaces.

This also means that while many transactivists supporting gender identity ideology think of themselves as left wing and progressive, their ideology is simply a mirror of the conservative and right-wing view of women that they claim to oppose.  While the most conservative view regards the proper expression of a woman’s sex as stereotypical femininity, trans activists often define what it is to be a woman through stereotypical expression.  The causal direction is simply reversed. For one, women should be feminine and for the other being feminine, in so far as they can make it, is to be a woman.  

Since ‘gender’ can be understood as sex, or as the expression of norms of socialisation of the sexes, we confront claims to be able to change sex, which is impossible, or claims to be able to change gender through having a sense of one’s sex being different from what it actually is. In the latter case gender is then conflated with sex.  Through identification with (or through) the social norms that are supposedly rejected the claim is made that one has changed sex.

The ‘explanation’ is to claim that to be a woman is to have some innate sense of being one.  This innate sense, in order not to be something contingent and open to challenge, is held to be common to everyone; everyone has a gender identity, whether admitted or not. We thus end up with the mantra that ‘transwomen are women’.  It is claimed by some supporters of gender identity ideology that everyone’s gender identity is expressed in terms of behaviour, appearance, including clothing, make-up, etc and is evidenced by it.

This ‘argument’ has its own problems. If a transwoman wears high heels, pretty pink dresses, lots of make-up and effects a flighty and skittish air they may be accused of believing that being a woman is existence as a crude stereotype that is insulting.  Not doing any of these things might leave the transwoman looking like a man and putting immediate and impossible-to-ignore obstacles to acceptance of their claims.  How recognition of all the other genders is to be accomplished, even by their bearers, is a moot point, including the idea of gender fluid, non-binary, non-gender, agender, third-gender etc.

More generally, what particular norms of behaviour, dress etc must be included in ‘gender identity’ and what is not, and how the mélange of social factors come together to instantiate and constitute a coherent sex status, is impossible to define.  A transwoman may seek acceptance as a woman, but fundamentally rejection or qualified non-acceptance will not be because of any presentation etc. but will be based on knowledge of the person’s sex; the real transphobe will be the one who rejects a transwomen fundamentally for their failure to represent masculinity.

What these point to are the limitations of subjective claims over objective reality, illustrated in other ways.   A person’s sex exists before it is ‘assigned’ (as the ideologists put it) and will exist whether it is ‘assigned’ at all, for example if no doctor is present ‘to do it’.  A baby girl and an old woman are still females; the first does not identify as anything and will, bar accidental factors such as death, develop into a woman, and the latter is still a woman whether she is, because of dementia, no longer able to be conscious of this fact or not.  When she is dead, she will be a dead woman.

It is claimed that because these subjective senses are unverifiable, we cannot test them – we cannot reach inside someone’s head to see how they really feel, process these feelings into thoughts and see how they are then formulated into claims to objective reality.  We cannot know the motivation behind a claim to a gender identity for example.  How do we know that a transwoman actually feels or thinks like a woman (leaving aside what this actually means) when they are a biological male?  In fact, the assertion would have to be to feel and think as a woman, although this lexical formulation is immediately less plausible.

How is it known that their ideas of their identity, arising (sometimes) as the result of psychological distress caused by various factors, conform to and constitute essential ‘womanhood’?  Since Gender identification is sometimes described by transgender activism as a political act, or that ‘there’s no one way to be transgender, and no one way for transgender people to look or feel about themselves’, or ‘there is no right or wrong way to be trans’, their claim is effectively denied.

Children come to know themselves through observing others and comparing themselves to others, including observing that there are two sexes and that they fit to one of them.  They learn that this cannot be changed.  In this, the sense of one’s sex is learned and not innate, even though it cannot be changed, so that for the vast majority of people it comes with the territory.  Distress caused by a perceived discrepancy between the idea of one’s sex, misnamed gender identity, and sex characteristics of one’s body can lead to what is termed gender dysphoria, but this does not allow one to change sex.  Even if medical and surgical interventions may help, that is relieve the distress to a greater or lesser degree, these will not change a person’s sex. They cannot therefore be a ‘cure’ for the claim that their condition requires a change of sex.

Such dysphoria evidences an awareness that one’s sex is different from one’s identity, from the claim to a fixed and innate identity as the opposite, or more accurately, other, sex.  Further, it is often asserted that this identity warrants the claim that despite natal sex, for example as a male, the transwoman was ‘always’ a woman.

In effect, the sexed body is rendered both relevant and irrelevant to the construction of all of humanity since trans people are still to be included under the classification of the two sexes that encompasses everyone. (We leave aside the many other ‘identities’ that render the whole ideology even more incoherent).  The claims about the meaning and importance of sex are therefore not just about trans people but about everyone and thus involve sweeping claims about the nature of the non-trans population that they are blissfully unaware of – that gender identity and not biological sex defines them and is definitive. Everyone is to be roped into the ideology whether they like it or not and the subjective claims of some become the objective claims on others.

In other words, if gender identity defines sex and everyone has a gender identity, everyone is defined by this phenomenon of gender identity with the social and political consequences demanded by the ideology.  ‘Transwomen are women’ can thus be read backwards.

If transwomen claim that they feel like women and have the same sense of themselves as a biological woman has, it implies that the feelings that biological women have, and their sense of themselves as a sex, is the same as that of transwomen.  I doubt very much whether the vast majority of women would endorse such a claim.  Not least because their understanding and feelings about being a woman are based on their female body, its functioning and the social experiences that this necessarily entails. None of these considerations involve ‘biological determinism’ in the sense that women’s social and political roles are biologically determined.

Many women therefore, as we have said, deny having any gender identity of the kind expressed by trans activism.  Their statements on their sense of themselves and the sexed bodies that they have will be more persuasive than the claims of men who do not inhabit female bodies, have not experienced life as a woman, and who cannot know how women feel about being a woman but can really only imagine or profess some idea of it.  

Women will do so with much stronger objective grounds to make such statements.  That they are often not called upon to do so makes it hard to avoid the view that a well-known hierarchy of authority between the sexes is being adopted.  In any case, regardless of any supposed authority, identifying as a woman does not make you one.

To sum up: you cannot change sex, you cannot become a different one by behaviour or appearance or other cultural attribute, and you cannot identify yourself into one.  Since we are most interested in the politics of gender identity ideology, we are left with the conclusion that any claims it makes are not based on reality.  For Marxism, if they are not, they are reactionary.

We will look at whether this conclusion can be explained further in the next post.

Back to part 2

Iran falls into the trap?

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A couple of weeks ago at an anti-war meeting in Belfast a number of speakers remarked that the state of Israel had exposed itself through its open espousal of genocidal intentions and that the Western powers were similarly damned through their support for it.  And this is true as far as it goes, which isn’t nearly far enough.

I made the observation that the open threat of genocide was a double-edged sword.  The point I made was that the ability to openly threaten such a thing was dangerous and particularly when it is then carried out! The full-blooded support of the Western powers has not even been dented either.

The renewed threat of a wider regional war has now come to the fore following Iran’s attack on Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles.  The immediate action of the US, Britain, France and a number of Arab countries has been to come to the aid of the genocidal state.  The large number of drones and missiles has reportedly not killed anyone and it is pretty clear that this was not far from the Iranian intention, given that their attack was hardly a surprise and most of the weapons used were unlikely to breach Israeli defences.

Previously, I agreed with a large number of observers that Iran would be falling into a trap by reacting to Israel’s provocations, but it obviously believes that the repeated attacks on leading figures were going to continue; that this was damaging to its standing and that sooner or later some provocation would be too damaging to pass over.  However, none of this is enough to explain its attack, while its statement that it has concluded its actions and will stop there is designed to draw a line under the exchange.  Whether it believes this, given the purpose of the Israeli provocations, must be open to some doubt.  It must therefore believe that it can weather a war with Israel or its action is a better alternative to continuous offences and accumulation of injuries.

On the Israeli side, the attack on the Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria was a clear provocation, or an invitation to attack it, to put it another way.  It must be assumed that this is because a war with Iran will serve its purposes and it believes it can win, which is the common view of most commentators. The claimed 99% success in downing the drones and missiles is held up as evidence of Israeli military superiority, which needed only a casus belli for the Zionists to seek to impose it, one which its western imperialist supporters would immediately endorse regardless of the hypocrisy in defending the right of the genocidal state to self-defence while denying the same to Iran.

Supporters of Russia in their on-line channels have raised doubts about the more or less complete blocking claimed by both the Israeli state and Western media and have pointed to the success of the most advanced Iranian missiles in penetrating Israeli defences, while also arguing that the Iranians did not obviously seek to maximise casualties but to demonstrate intent and capability.  They argue that this explains to some degree the weakness of the impact while also pointing out the benefit of the intelligence gained in observing the response to the attack and the huge cost of Israeli success.  They also note the contribution of the Zionist state’s imperialist allies, which they claim is not certain to continue.

Whether Iran has greater offensive capacities is something that will be demonstrated should the conflict escalate.  What almost all the commentary has claimed is that Western imperialist support is conditional and that its contribution to the attack by Iran is leverage for the widespread calls to Israel by Western leaders that there should be no escalation.  And this is where the narrative stops making sense.

The Western imperialists, foremost the US, is supposed to be trying to pull Israel back from too aggressive a response to a regime it wants to overthrow.   The same US that has armed and defended Israeli genocide is suddenly resisting its attack on Iran.  Haven’t all the Western powers spent the last six months claiming to be deploring or holding back Zionist genocide?  To what effect?

We are to believe that repeated Israeli provocations have not been approved by the US.  How credible is this?  Israel is more dependent on the US now than it has almost ever been but we are supposed to believe that it went ahead and triggered a potential war with Iran without getting the ok from the US?

Is the immediate defence against the Iranian attack not evidence of support for the Israeli stance, and is the failure to denounce its provocations only the result of embarrassment at Israeli actions?  When the Biden regime once again declared its four-square support for Israel, was this a lie?   Why would the US support provocations that can only lead to war if it was not going to back Israel when it would arrive?  

The argument in response is that the US does not want another ‘forever war’ and that Biden will not want another one as he seeks re-election. But have those putting forward this argument not noted that the US has already provoked a war in Ukraine and is desperately seeking to keep Ukraine in the game, to keep the war going, and have they not also noted that a war by Israel against Iran will be more popular domestically than genocidal slaughter in Gaza, from which it might serve to divert attention?  It may seem perverse that the US, with Israel, may seek to claim the moral high ground by commencing another war but they have already done so in Ukraine and Gaza.

It is impossible to ignore that just as Ukraine is a proxy for US imperialism in its rivalry with Russia and China so is Israel a proxy in its rivalry against Russia’s Iranian ally.  The prospect of war between Israel and Iran has immediately involved Western imperialism directly and such continued support would make more obvious the reality of a world heading to a conflict between the old imperialist hegemonic alliance led by the United States, with its mostly European satraps, and the new capitalist rivals headed by China and Russia, supported by Iran and North Korea.

The duty of socialists is to oppose these wars and oppose the dynamic to a world conflagration. We should therefore oppose the drive to war by Israel and its imperialist sponsors and point out their prime responsibility for the current escalation.  In doing so we must oppose the old imperialist hegemonic alliance and also oppose the claims of its rivals. These claims are not those of liberation but of their right to carve out their own ‘fair share’ of the wealth of the world created by its workers, who they both compete in exploiting.

This is a lesson forgotten by those ‘leftists’ who either support Ukraine or Israel and, on the other side, those who think themselves ‘anti-imperialist’ for supporting the new upstart capitalist powers in the shape of China and Russia. There is no ‘fair sharing’ involved in capitalist competition, not with the workers exploited or with rivals.  What there is is permanent instability and conflict that inevitably erupts in war that working people pay for with their lives.  Such are the lessons of history.

What future for Palestine?

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What is going to happen to Palestine?  The sense that the catastrophic situation is almost hopeless and that nothing can be done is reflected in the short video by the Scottish blogger Craig Murray. The question was addressed from a Marxist viewpoint in Boffy’s Blog and we are obliged to consider whether he is he right about the future of the Palestinian cause.  We can start to do this by looking at what is currently happening and what the past has to tell us about how we got here.

The invasion of Gaza was for months defended as ‘Israel’s right to self-defence’, with no one appearing on television being allowed to open their mouth before it being demanded that they agree and condemn Hamas.  This ‘right’ was said to involve targeted strikes against Hamas and avoidance of civilian casualties, still claimed today by Zionist apologists but now with zero credibility.

It took no time at all before it became clear that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) invasion was an exercise in mass murder, with the specific targeting of journalists who could report on it, aid workers who could feed the besieged population and medical staff who could treat the sick and wounded.  It was claimed that hospitals were not being attacked and were not going to be attacked until now there are effectively none left.  The targeting of journalists, aid workers and medical staff had its rationale in defending lies, starving the population and targeting the sick and injured so that nothing was out of bounds and no hope would remain.

Civilians, particularly children and women, became the main casualties in the ‘war against Hamas’. Advised by the IDF to move to ‘safe’ areas, they were then bombed.  Millions were forced to leave their homes that had been totally destroyed and made to move further and further south in what had all the appearance of ethnic cleansing.  Each atrocity merged into the next and the intensification of the viciousness of the IDF was made more cynical by the lies that accompanied each one of them.

The International Court of Justice found that there was a plausible case of genocide although the majority of world opinion had already arrived at this conclusion some time before and had demonstrated this though thousands of protests across the world.  The speed of the killing and the callousness of the Zionist state left no room for illusions as to what was being carried out.  

There was incredulity and horror when the death toll rose and rose to dwarf that of the Hamas attack on October 7th, while no crime seemed too atrocious for it not to be followed by something worse.  Liberal illusions that an ICJ judgment might stop or even moderate the killing were swiftly dashed as were vague expectations that the pogrom might expend itself. Many hoped that there would be some sign of it ending but such hopes were repeatedly dashed by each new greater atrocity.

The reaction of Western governments was to repeat Zionist lies about forty beheaded babies and systematic rape etc. and continue to plead ‘Israel’s right to self-defence’.  Biden went out in front by claiming to have seen the evidence and calling into question the number of dead Palestinians, the total of which is now many times the number he denied.  The Western media sought to sow distrust of the scale of the killing through mandatory reference to the source of the numbers coming from the ‘Hamas-run’ Health Ministry.

The Zionist state was clearly breaking international law, as is all Western state support for it.  This includes not only political cover but continued supply of weapons and ammunition; posting a naval armada around Gaza and beyond to defend it, and attacks on those such as the Houthis who carried out armed actions against Western shipping going to and from the Suez canal.

Far from attacking the forces that were committing genocide, a course of action no one in the world remotely expected, the US and British attacked those trying to stop it,  Upon unproven allegations by the Israeli state, already repeatedly shown as pathological liars , a dozen Western powers stopped their aid going into Gaza.  Now the inevitable famine is accelerating, food aid is blocked by the IDF and this week seven aid workers have been killed.  The acme of cynicism can be seen by the US dropping tiny amounts of aid from aircraft while supplying the bombs that the IDF drops to kill the same people. 

Each atrocity causes more dismay and outrage and each Zionist lie more anger and frustration as they are propagated by the Western media.  The majority of the world knows that what is happening in Gaza is genocide and that each atrocity leads not to a step back but to a new level of barbarity so that the word is no exaggeration.

No step has been too barbaric for the western powers to row back and sanction the Zionist state while ‘international law’ is exposed to be whatever these powers decide.  Reliance on the UN, always a liberal illusion, is exposed as so much handwringing. Who is going to impose sanctions and punishment?

The Arab regimes that were set to come to terms with the state of Israel before October 7th are dogs that have barely barked with no intention to bite.  Iran is keen to stay out of war and for its own state interests is wise to do so; its conflict with the US has been subject to agreed limits but Israel increasingly shows that these are not theirs and is attempting to provoke a wider conflict. Those with the mistaken belief that the Israeli state is somehow losing the existing ‘war’ might consider all this.

So, who else is going to stop the genocide because it is not over yet, and any pause–like every other Zionist imposed ‘peace’–will simply set the scene for the next war.  Even the declared objective of destroying Hamas is a project to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as in any way politically relevant, leaving nothing to prevent whatever next steps the Zionist state decides to take.  In the West Bank the repression of the Palestinians has accelerated as more land is expropriated and the Zionist settlers are allowed to do the IDF job for it, egged on by a Government of rabid racists and fascists.  The remaining Palestinians within Israel will suffer more discrimination and oppression. 

Knowing this, the answer to the question – what is going to happen to Palestine? – is that the objective of politically crushing Palestinian resistance of any sort will continue and all and every measure will be employed as the Zionist state, supported by the US, to achieve this objective.  The population of Israel has moved sharply to the right and is now dominated by rabid racism, leaving even ‘liberal’ Zionism and those calling for peace small and isolated.

With the continued support of Western imperialism the Zionist state will continue its policy of erasure of the Palestinian people so that no state of their own can be realistically conceived. The so-called ‘two-state’ solution has been dead since it was first proposed by the United Nations in 1947 and then buried by the Zionist movement alongside the occupations by Egypt and Transjordan. The current genocide is perfectly consistent with the Zionist project and its enactment going back to this time and before.  The extreme brutality and targeting of civilians is nothing new, as is the disproportionate violence inflicted following any form of Palestinian resistance.  The supremely cruel and brutal response after October 7th could not be unexpected.  It has stretched the previous murderous violence of the Zionist state but it is not qualitatively different from the policy of ethnic cleansing upon which the Zionist state was first constructed.

That this state has been able to so openly flout the pretences of the Western powers to defend human rights and lawful behaviour is because the Zionist state is an outpost of Western imperialism itself; it is its son of a bitch.  Israel relies on this imperialism, especially the US.  Who can the Palestinians rely on that can weigh against the overpowering position of the Zionist state when it has this support?

It is obvious that by themselves the Palestinians cannot win an independent state and that the solidarity movement cannot make the difference unless it were able to neuter the intervention of the Western powers. This might allow the workers and poor of the Arab world to join together to overthrow their own regimes and the Zionist state. Is there any sign that the support of Western imperialism has been in any way significantly damaged?

Let’s take the example of our own county: Ireland is supposed to be a beacon of support for the Palestinian cause but what is its contribution to the prevention of genocide?  The UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese put it plainly and honestly:

‘There’s this tendency to be very supportive with rhetoric, as Ireland has, but when it comes to taking concrete actions, there is zero. Not a little. Zero. The countries that have been most outspoken, like Ireland, what have they done in practice? Nothing. And this is shameful. It is disgraceful.’

Talk is cheap and the talk from many political forces in Ireland is very cheap, and they have not been challenged.  Without challenge the cheap talk will continue until it is realised that those speaking it are part of the problem, not simply some inadequate or unsatisfactory opposition.

Socialists have an aphorism that the main enemy is at home, and this applies to those in solidarity with the Palestinian people, because the states that ensure Zionism can get away with genocide are the same states in which they live.  The task therefore is not to plead with these states to stop Israel or to believe that some sort of pressure will do the job but to oppose their own states and build towards their own revolution.

If the solidarity movement really believes that genocide is being carried out, then it must face the reality of what has happened and accept all the consequences the word entails for its victims: ‘the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group’.  In the West the potential alternatives to two of the main supporters of this genocide are President Trump and Prime Minister Starmer, just as rabidly pro-Zionist, if not more so, than Genocide Joe and Sunak.  This is more or less the case across the Western capitalist world.  

In Ireland Sinn Fein sups with the devil on St Patricks day while being treated as part of the solidarity movement. Everyone is to boycott Israel but Sinn Fein is permitted to party with those providing the weapons through which the massacre is carried out. A solidarity movement that accepts such actions is not a solidarity movement at all. We don’t need a movement that accepts the hypocritical claims of concern from those responsible for genocide and excuses those who similarly express weasel words of sympathy while being careful not to challenge those behind the slaughter.

If a genocide supported by every bourgeois political force in Western capitalism does not teach the movement that this alliance as a whole is the enemy then expressions of solidarity will go no further than demonstrating opposition and an inability to do anything about it. What is required is not pressure, because what is the price to be paid for ignoring it? it is not simply disavowal of the current leaders, because the alternatives standing by as replacement are no better. And it is not BDS, because imperialism has made it clear that far from boycotting Israel it is supporting it and will continue to do so. It is not the working class that controls the societies and economies of imperialism, its investment and trade, so it is not we who will determine what relationships imperialism will have with the Zionist state. Such victories as the BDS movement might have can only be steps towards the organisation of something more fundamental that points towards taking control out of the hands of the capitalist class.

Building a working class alternative to all these forces is required in order for pressure to be threatening, for displacement of current political leaders to be meaningful, and for actions against links with the Zionist state to become an instrument towards the working class taking control.

All the liberal institutions of this world have been exposed, and so have the spurious claims on behalf of an alternative capitalist alliance formed around China and Russia; as if they represent something radically different that will stop what is happening.

If there is another road besides organising a working class movement for socialism that defeats imperialism and its allies then what is it? And if it does not yet exist do we build it or accept the consequences of genocide?

Marxism and Gender Identity ideology (2) – What is it?

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If we look at the UK government’s 2018 consultation paper on reform of the Gender Recognition Act we see that gender is defined as ‘often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender refers to socially constructed characteristics, and is often assumed from the sex people are registered as at birth.’  Thus, do we immediately enter the world of indefinite definitions that create uncertainty as to their meaning and a tortuous journey to understand how it all is supposed to hang together in some coherent way.

In the document, a legally recognised gender is meant to allow replacement of a supposedly erroneous recording of sex on the birth certificate, although it cannot be the ‘right’ one because gender is not sex and is not defined as sex. The individual is entitled ‘to a new birth certificate issued with an updated sex marker’, and according to the definition of the Full Gender Recognition Certificate, this ‘shows that the holder has satisfied the criteria for legal recognition in their acquired gender.’  So, although it is a ‘sex marker’ it is not the actual sex of the individual, which is observed at birth.

Like so many other aspects of this question, as we shall see, sex is both central and to be displaced.

What it is displaced by is not clear, and certainly not by the above definition.  We are told that ‘gender’ is sometimes expressed in particular terms but not what it is that is being expressed.  This invites the question, what other expressions does it have that might lead us to understand what it is?  Perhaps this is explained by the definition of ‘Gender expression’, which is ‘a person’s outward expression of their gender. This may differ from their gender identity or it may reflect it.’  In which case the expression of gender that is supposed to be core to the definition of gender may not actually be a person’s ‘gender identity.’ 

The definition of gender goes on to say that ‘it refers to socially constructed characteristics’, which tells us that this is not a natural entity, like sex, which is biological, but is a social construction, but again does not tell us what it is that has been constructed.  What social constructions are we being referred to?  If it is ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’, why is this not stated, although it can’t be these because these are just some expressions of it and these, we have been told, may not reflect a person’s gender identity.  If conceived as social norms, of behaviour, presentation etc., it doesn’t make much sense to refer to individuals in terms of a social norm, which is a feature of society and not of individuals.

In any case, we are not told what ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ are.  These might be understood to refer to the characteristics of males and females, not to their natural attributes but to social ones that have been attached.  Could there be references to some notions of what ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ are or to concrete social practices?  Both, however, vary by time and place and are not like sex, from which we are told we might assume a person’s gender, which is immutable.  Gender, therefore, is something very different from sex, considered on even the most minimum basis, and gives rise to doubts as to how it could be a substitute for it.

Of course, these questions are easily answered if it asserted that ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ are often seen as expressions of one’s sex but not its substance and that socially constructed characteristics are often placed on the sexes, which is why we can often assume them from a person’s sex.  This however would not assist the project of replacing sex with gender.

The definition of Gender identity is ‘a person’s internal sense of their own gender. This does not have to be man or woman. It could be, for example, non-binary.’  So, if gender refers to socially constructed characteristics and gender identity is an internal sense of these, gender identity must derive from social characteristics that have been internalised.  If this is the case, gender identity cannot be innate and cannot exist at birth since at this stage of human development such characteristics as masculinity and femininity have not been perceived.  Since they vary by time and place, this also raises the question how something claimed to be innate, being inherent in the essential nature of someone, and from birth, can vary by time and place (unlike someone’s sex).

Nevertheless, this is the ground upon which the designation of one’s sex through a new ‘sex marker’ based on ‘gender’ is made, and of the political demands made by Gender Identity ideology. 

The uncertainty is increased when we are told that a gender can not just be either a man or a woman but ‘non-binary’, which is further defined as; ‘an umbrella term for a person who identifies as in some way outside of the man-woman gender binary. They may regard themselves as neither exclusively a man nor a woman, or as both, or take another approach to gender entirely. Different people may use different words to describe their individual gender identity, such as genderfluid, agender or genderqueer.’

What is meant by ‘identifies as’?  Is it a way of stating that a person is, for example, saying I am “neither a man nor a woman” or saying, “I am both a man and a woman’’?   If it is more or less the same as this, how does this make sense? 

How can gender identity, which refers to someone’s internal sense of their gender, which refers to socially constructed characteristics, refer to entities that do not exist, such as a person that is not a man or a woman?  Does this then mean that ‘socially constructed characteristics’ are, or can include, ideas or conceptions that have no material reality?  Are there any limits to the ideas constructed?  In what sense, and in what way, can someone saying they are, for example agender, be considered, and therefore treated, differently to someone claiming to be of the other sex (if these different genders are to be taken as socially significant)?

And what if the claim to be non-binary is really a political statement, in what way can the concept of gender and gender identity suppliant that of sex and its corporeal reality if such statements are also, or really, statements of political belief –  a political identity?

We are told that the Gender Recognition Act 2004: is’ an Act of Parliament that allows transgender people to gain legal recognition of their acquired gender, so long as that gender is a man or woman’, which lets us know that the law will not recognise something which does not exist, i.e. a person that is neither a man or a woman or a person that is both.  And we also don’t need to seek guidance on what the legal status is of the other genders.  This, however, leaves open the question what sort of thing ‘gender’ is, that can include things that cannot exist but is also something that can legally replace sex, which obviously does exist, for some purposes. 

We are not told what is meant by a ‘person’s internal sense of their own gender’.  What is meant by ‘sense’; is it feeling, belief, understanding, perception or knowledge?  Why should a person’s expression or statement of these be legislated as true, and subject to legal obligation by the state?  What other claims by a person of belief etc. are unequivocally accepted and acted upon by the state? Particularly when this ‘sense’ can also include things that do not make sense – like not being either a woman or a man or being both at the same time?

The definition of Gender Identity as a person’s internal sense of their own gender, is the basis of an ‘Acquired gender’, and ‘ The Gender Recognition Act 2004 describes this as the gender in which an applicant is living and seeking legal recognition. It is different from the sex recorded at birth and is instead, the gender the individual identifies with. It could be man or woman.’  Since both ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’ do not require gender presentation or gender expression it is unclear how the ‘gender the individual identifies with’ could always be verified.  To identify ‘with’ something is not the same as identifying ‘as’ something (ignoring what exactly identifying as something can actually accomplish or entail).

In any case, what does it even mean to live ‘in’ a gender that is in some way different from your sex?  How can anyone live outside of or in some way different from what their body dictates, a body which is sexed and which determines so much of life and existence, even whether you are able to exist at all?  It is an elementary fact, understood by everyone, that life cannot exist outside the body because the functioning body is life.  To live ‘in’ some thing, and through this thing, is to live in a (sexed) body.

One does not live in femininity, for example, or in socially constructed characteristics, and social norms might be lived within society by a person but are not, as we have noted, a sort of internal identity.  Proof of having a collection of documents, such as driving licence, passport or utility bill, as set out in the Gender Recognition Act 2004, is a bureaucratic, simulated substitute. Those with a non-binary identity might struggle.

Other inconsistencies can be noted.  While gender and gender identity refer to social constructions and internal senses, ‘gender reassignment’ refers to ‘reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.’  Since sex can be replaced by a ‘sex marker’ that recognises a person’s ‘gender’, it would also appear that gender changes (or reassigns) a person’s sex by a physical process (that does not have to be completed).  Gender identity as an internal sense can replace sex while gender reassigned involves a physical process.  These involve two very different operations, and it is not explained in what way they are able to involve and accomplish the same task.

Finally, the British Government document states that it wants to know the implications of ‘recognising a gender that is neither male nor female’, which are, of course, the two sexes and I don’t know of any other.  At this point it is tempting to repeat philosopher Alex Byrnes’ remark in his book (Trouble with Gender, p107) that “what ‘gender’ is supposed to mean is anyone’s guess.”  The labyrinthine series of definitions examined above form the basic structure, such as it is, of an ideology that is supposed to sustain certain political claims, and it is this ideology that further occasional posts will examine

Back to part 1

Forward to part 3

The Third Year of War (3 of 3)

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Arms-length second-hand imperialism from the British Ukraine Solidarity Campaign: https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/

Just as political programmes have a logic of their own irrespective of intentions, and war is the continuation of politics by other means, so does war impose its logic on those who politically support it.  The pro-war left has defended support for Ukraine and the intervention of Western imperialism, but as the war has developed it has been admitted by the leaders of both Ukraine and Western imperialism that for the war to continue Western imperialism must decisively increase its intervention.

One obvious consequence is that those who initially supported Ukraine on the grounds of self-determination can no longer honestly do so, given complete reliance on the West for its success. The only way out of this lack of self-determination (that is supposed to achieve self-determination) is to argue that, ultimately, Western imperialism is a benevolent ally with no interests of its own that might conflict with those of the Ukrainian people.

Such an argument would up-end everything socialists believe about capitalism, its imperialist form, and the interests of the working class. Whatever way you look at it there is no way to avoid this consequence. You can, however, avoid admitting it, but this can only be attempted by trying to cover it up and war is very unforgiving of attempts to deny reality.

Reliance on Western imperialism has revealed the conflict as a proxy war against Russia in which the role of Ukraine is to fight and die for NATO, justified by the Ukrainian state on the grounds that membership will provide its people with security!  As we have explained in many posts, NATO powers provoked the war, with the complicity of the Ukrainian state, on the understanding that it would result in Russian defeat. The build-up of the Ukrainian armed forces with the assistance of Western powers, alongside unprecedented economic sanctions, would result at worst in the crippling of Russian power and at best a return to a subservient Russian regime à la Boris Yeltsin.

The pro-war left rejected the characterisation of the war as a proxy conflict but its continuation being possible only on the basis of Western intervention means that this is not credible. The evolution of the war has meant that the position of this left is now exposed: as the saying goes, when the tide goes out you find out those who are swimming naked.  To mix the metaphors, standing still with the existing justification for supporting the war will not do and it is necessary to find a reverse gear.  It appears the pro-war left don’t have one.

A recent article by a leader of the Fourth International, Catherine Samary, indicates that instead of either revising its view of the war to one of opposition, or even of attempting to substantiate the claim that there is no proxy war in place, it has decided to justify the proxy war! 

Samary now admits that Ukraine ‘had a vital need for its [Western] financial and military aid in the face of Russian power’ and that ‘the war consolidated NATO and favoured the militarization of budgets.’  In addition to the ‘vital’ role of Western imperialism, the directly regressive consequence of the war for the Western working class is admitted; as is the reactionary nature of the Ukrainian regime, characterised by the ‘social attacks of Zelensky’s neoliberal regime and its ideological positions’, including its apologetics for the “values” of the West.

So, the hypocritical claims of the West are highlighted, although not in relation to the war: the claims about Russian imperialism and sole responsibility for the war, its intention to threaten the rest of Europe, and absolute necessity for its defeat – all this is shared by this left.

* * *

The first reason given for rejecting the proxy nature of the war, and the irrelevance of the reactionary nature of the Kyiv regime and progressive character of Western intervention, is the ‘popular resistance to a Russian imperial invasion.’  This, it is claimed, is the ‘essential characteristic ignored by many left-wing movements’ – ‘the massive popular mobilization . . . in the face of the Russian invasion,’ which means that we must support ‘the reality of armed and unarmed popular resistance.’  

Unfortunately the armed popular resistance she claims does not exist–there are no independent working class militias, and the unarmed resistance equally has no political independent organisation since opposition parties have been proscribed. Even popular enthusiasm for the war amongst the Ukrainian population opposed to the Russian invasion is draining away, as it inevitably does in capitalist wars. She quotes an article stating that ‘at the start of the invasion, citizens from all walks of life lined up in front of the recruitment centres. Nearly two years later, that is no longer the case . . .’

She quotes another article that ‘the fragilities of the popular resistance are real after two years, analyses Oksana Dutchak, member of the editorial board of the Ukrainian journal Common. She evokes a feeling of ‘injustice in relation to the mobilization process, where questions of wealth and/or corruption lead to the mobilization of the majority (but not exclusively) of the popular classes, which goes against the ideal image of the “people’s war” in which the whole of society participates.’

Samary states that ‘while the majority opposes and may even dislike many of the government’s actions (a traditional attitude in Ukraine’s political reality for decades), opposition to the Russian invasion and distrust of any possible “peace” agreement with the Russian government . . . are stronger and there is very little chance this will change in the future.’ With these words Samary does not appear to realise that she admits the lack of any popular control of the war and it lying in the hands of the ‘neoliberal’ regime that she professes to oppose, ‘and there is very little chance this will change.’ The choice of many Ukrainians has been to flee abroad while increasing numbers of soldiers are choosing to surrender rather than die. Some have even done so on condition that they are not sent back to Ukraine in any prisoner swap.

Even the Western media, at least sections of it in the United States, demolish the ‘ideal image’ that Samary wishes to project. The Washington Post (behind a paywall ), reports that:

‘Civilians here say that means military recruiters are grabbing everyone they can. In the west, the mobilization drive has steadily sown panic and resentment in small agricultural towns and villages like Makiv, where residents said soldiers working for draft offices roam the near-empty streets searching for any remaining men.’

The report goes on:

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The Ukrainian state is not offering people ‘the opportunity to participate in defining the future of the country’ that she says is necessary for victory.  Why would a ‘neoliberal’ regime do that?  Many don’t want to take part in what Samary calls the ‘popular resistance’ because they don’t want to die and don’t trust their authorities not to throw their lives away. 

She acknowledges the problem that ‘the majority opposes and may even dislike many of the government’s actions’ and are also in ‘opposition to the Russian invasion’ but calls on them to swallow their doubts and fight on the basis of a political perspective composed of fairy tale illusions. These include ‘a socially just view of wartime policies and post-war reconstruction’; ‘for social and environmental justice, for democracy and solidarity in the management of the “commons”, and the defeat of any relationship of neocolonial domination.’ How would an alliance of a neoliberal regime, a congenitally corrupt state and Western imperialism deliver any of that?

She says that those opposed to the war are ‘blind to the relations of neocolonial and imperial domination of Russia’ but she is oblivious to her own blindness to Western imperialist domination, which is now able to decide whether to dump its support to Ukraine or promise more escalation, with the former promising more death and destruction and the latter involving another step towards world war.

Under what political perspective would it be possible to both oppose oppression by Russia and avoid submission to being cannon fodder for the Ukrainian state and Western imperialism?  Only a socialist policy could uphold commitment to this, the first practical steps of which would be opposition to the war, opposition to the Russian invasion and NATO expansion and organisation of resistance to the demands of the Ukrainian state.

Samary has no perspective of a socialist road out of the war so has no role for the Ukrainian working class except to fight and die for a ‘national liberation’ and a ‘self-determination’ that seeks to preserve the integrity of the capitalist state but condemns many of its workers to destruction.

The first rationale for supporting the proxy war is thus becoming less and less credible as it grinds on.  The Western powers are not disturbed by the loss of Ukrainian lives; so we hear more calls by British and American politicians for the age of mobilisation to be dropped so that its youth can join the roll call of death – ‘young blood’, as it is quite accurately called. But what sort of socialist supports dying for a capitalist state fighting a proxy war for imperialism?

* * *

The second rationale from Samary is expressed succinctly in one sentence as she asks – ‘was the defence of Ukrainianness “reactionary” or “petty-bourgeois” in essence?’  To which the only socialist answer is Yes. 

What is ‘Ukrainness’ but a nationalist confection to be put to use by the Ukrainian ruling classes?  What is the democratic content of nationalist exclusiveness encapsulated in this word, especially in a country with historically very different conceptions of what is involved in being a Ukrainian?  For what reason was the right to national self-determination historically supported by Marxists, except as a democratic demand for the right of an oppressed people to break its colonial chains and create a separate state?  How could this apply to Ukraine, which had already become an independent state but decided that it would employ this independence to seek a military alliance with imperialism against a rival capitalist power? And now wishes to defend itself through nationalist ideological garbage! How can all this be called socialist?

Samary has a response to these objections, if not a credible reply – the Western military alliance is not a problem!   Having signed up to support for the war and the Ukrainian capitalist state she has been compelled to find reasons to also support its imperialist backers.  What are they?

She states– ‘As regards NATO, the European left missed the moment of a campaign for its dissolution when this was on the agenda, in 1991.’  So no more chance of opposing NATO!  This organisation has no anti-Russian agenda, she says, blaming Russia itself–in the shape of Boris Yeltsin–for dismantling the USSR, ignoring that it was the United States who did its best to keep him in power, subsequently rebuffing Russia even when it wanted to join NATO and helped NATO in Afghanistan.  She even admits that :

‘Putin hoped to consolidate the Eurasian Union with Ukraine’s participation in trade with the EU, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, he intended to offer the West the services of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) after the collapse of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan.’  Yet the West refused this cooperation.

She states that this was because of ‘the consolidation of a strong Russian state, both internally and externally’. But why, if the West sought a strong alliance, did NATO not welcome Russia as a strong ally?  

It can only be that being a strong state, Russia would have its own interests that it would want accommodated, which the West was not prepared to accept.  Unfortunately, this then makes the West co-perpetrators of the conflict that Samary wants to pin blame solely on Russia.  In fact, given the Russian offer of cooperation, it looks like it is the Western capitalist powers who are primarily responsible for the increased rivalry between Russia and the Western capitalist powers that has led to the war. This, however, is somewhere that Samary doesn’t want to go, because it is Ukraine and its NATO sponsors that she wants to defend.

She states that ‘NATO, led by the US, was . . . “brain dead” and not threatening on the eve of the Russian invasion;’ a view that ignores its nuclear posture, its expansion into Eastern Europe, its wars in Afghanistan and Libya, its support for the end of Ukrainian neutrality, its policy of supporting Ukraine re-taking Crimea, and its assistance in building up the Ukrainian armed forces to enable it to do so. The war, she claims, ‘gave back a “raison d’être” to NATO and the arms industries’, presumably because they didn’t have a reason to exist beforehand? Who can seriously believe such nonsense?  And from someone claiming to be on the ‘left’!

If we sum up, support for the war now involves a new mobilisation in Ukraine while demoting its increasing unpopularity and the stench of corruption surrounding it.  It means defending the role of the Western powers against Russia, despite the consequences of militarisation on workers in the West, including its impact on working class living standards.

It involves whitewashing the role of NATO while dismissing opposition to it as a bus that has been missed.  It argues instead for ‘general socialized control over the production and use of armaments’, that is, workers control of militarisation and imperialist war!  Impossible to conceive as something real and utterly reactionary as a mere concept.

The policy of support for the current war thus inevitably entails alliances with reactionary forces in the West: ‘broad fronts of solidarity with Ukraine can include – and this is important – an “anti-Russian” Ukrainian immigration supporting neoliberal policies like those of Zelensky, and uncritical of the EU and NATO. It is essential to work towards respecting pluralism within these fronts . . .’

The circle of a reactionary pact is completed.  And all this under an article entitled Arguments for a “left agenda”.  Whoever pretends such an agenda has anything ‘left’ about it is either an idiot or is seeking to recruit one.

At some point the war in Ukraine will end but the rationale for the pro-war left to continue to defend Western imperialism will remain.  It will, in other words, continue an agenda best described, in Marxist terms, as social-imperialist – socialism in words (although Samary doesn’t even manage this!) and pro-imperialist in action.

Back to part 2

People before Profit and the Referendum – Ask not for whom the bell tolls

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To paraphrase John Donne, “all supporters of the referendum are diminished, because they all were involved in saying that yes was the answer; and therefore, never send to know for whom was the failure; the failure was yours”.

This could be the epitaph for all the political forces that supported the Family and Care referendum, but especially for the opposition parties, which, faced with the text put forward by those they claim to oppose, could only find ways to support it.

In their obituary for the referendum People before Profit (PbP) invite their supporters to feel sorry for their leaders because “left-wing people” were put “in an impossible situation”, which translates as People before Profit were put “in an impossible situation’.  This is because, as the obituary noted, “working-class people voted overwhelmingly for marriage equality and a woman’s right to choose”; they voted to give “specific and positive rights”.  Yet they voted against this referendum berceuse it consisted of “vacuous words that gave no guarantee of social care, especially outside the family”, and thought that it involved a “little bit of verbal tokenism.”

Why did most working people take this view? Because, when it comes to the government “most people do not trust them, and many despise them.”  When it came to the referendum “many saw through it – especially when Varadkar appeared on television to deny the state had responsibility for social care.” So self-absorbed was he by his own privileged class background that he uttered a sort of ‘let them eat cake’ remark that revealed his arrogance, his disconnection from the reality of their lives, and in doing so inadvertently told the truth!

Did People before Profit not hear him?  Why did they not see through it as well?  Why did they not recognise the “vacuous words” and “verbal tokenism” and lead “the anti-establishment mood in the country”? Why ,instead, did they trail behind the referendum’s “stale top-down exercise”?

Now, after the event, it gives the excuse of being faced “with two bad options. Remove the sexist language but confirm that care must be the responsibility of the family or keep the sexist language in and embolden conservative forces in the church and on the right.”  Exactly what the Government hoped would compel a majority to vote yes, except a huge majority didn’t fall for this blackmail and People before Profit did.

The majority didn’t fall for it for all the reasons above, and because Yes supporters were not telling the truth when they claimed it was a ‘first step’–it was, in fact, a last step to cover for not taking any more. They already knew that this was not “a government that guaranteed social care for the elderly . . . not providing any appropriate public care for younger disabled people – or one that provided free creches or built enough social homes.”

How could anyone believe that this Government, cynical enough to hand back €13 billion of tax to one of the richest corporations in the world, was going to put the care of its people first by putting it into its constitution?  Only ‘the opposition’ it would seem, including those who think there is a problem of profit being put before people and who, in their private moments, promise to be good Marxists.  Except Marxists are the last people who think a capitalist state will ever care about its working people, never mind care for them, and who would use a referendum as an opportunity to demonstrate the truth of this through exposure of “vacuous words” and “verbal tokenism”.

PbP should have been at the forefront of challenging the Government ploy that tried to make the people responsible for keeping the existing sexist wording in the constitution and thereby compel them to support their pretence of change.  They could have made all the arguments put forward in these two posts that pointed to the question of women’s rights being conquered in the real world and not by a piece of paper promoted as a sort of branding document for the state.

Their shameless failure is demonstrated by the fact that they justified support for the referendum in order not to “keep the sexist language in and embolden conservative forces in the church and on the right”, although they now state that the referendum has resulted in exactly this outcome, while also denying it! (through their claim that the No vote was progressive on the basis of the reasons set out above).

At the same time their claim to justification relies on their supposed prior need to support the referendum so that they could not be blamed for any potential defeat of this ‘progressive’ step; yet they now see no reason not to blame the Government when the defeat has actually happened.  What was stopping them blaming any failure to get rid of the sexist wording on the Government beforehand?  Truthfully, their supporters could claim that it was not they who would be responsible, but the cynical proposals forced upon them that they had every right to reject.  Why did People before Profit not take this approach?

Their statement berates (or is it hails?) the referendum because it “also represents the close of an era when the two conservative parties tried to re-furbish their image to look ‘progressive’”, which is yet another pointer to why it should have been opposed from the start. Yet this ‘progressive’ agenda is a liberal one that People before Profit has swallowed whole.  The referendum amendments were vacuous because the liberal agenda is vacuous, and if it was basing itself on Marxist politics People before Profit would have known this.  This whopper of a mistake leading to a whopper of a defeat (in the words of Leo Varadkar) indicates how far the organisation has departed from such politics.

Rather than admit that it screwed up People before Profit wriggle with excuses–“marginally we chose to remove the sexist language and continue to fight for more care and equality but this was a difficult call and we recognised the severe limitations of the choices on offer. Many of our own supporters adopted a Yes-No position and this was reflected in an exit poll.”

If we translate – it was all very difficult, we had good intentions, we only got it a bit wrong, and some of our supporters were smarter than we were and didn’t listen to everything we said anyway.

PbP go on to claim that they will go on to campaign for the Government and State to do a better job next time, so it is all in the past already and time to move on. And we know what this moving on will entail: it will involve them campaigning passionately to save their seats, desperately hoping that their constituents will forget their role and get on board with their moving on (as we see already in their graphic above this article). A bit of honesty would do them no harm but on this score they are less inclined than the bourgeois parties, are even less given too looking in the mirror while pointing the finger, and less disposed to some form of accountability.

The organisation claims that “there is also a dark side to the referendum which the left should not ignore. It brought to the fore right-wing elements who want to import Trump-style politics to Ireland.”

It goes on: “The far right and those clamouring for a return of Catholic Church power will try to use government ineptitude and anti-establishment mood in the country to rehabilitate their conservative vision for Ireland. They won a victory of sorts yesterday.” It concludes that it “will be offering a different alternative. One that takes the anger in Irish society and throws it back on the rich and their political elite. . . .  We want to see a return to mass movements that challenge this government, particularly on housing. And we want a left government that makes a real break with FF and FG.”

People before Profit doesn’t recognise that to lead any anti-establishment mood it is not enough to base itself on anger, their whole international tendency has been spouting this primitive conception for decades.  To form this mood into something coherent and organised requires a political programme and yes, building a mass movement and a working class political party to lead it, something People before Profit, despite its claims, is not doing.

To do so requires some very basic steps, including having a political alternative to the far right and not simply sticking labels on it–such as ‘far-right’ or ‘fascist’–that more or less rapidly lose their force, even when they are true.  While claiming to want to build a mass movement they put forward–to cap the alternative–a ‘left government’, which is not the same as a perspective based on the independent organisation of the working class, although they appear not to know this.  Their current approach arises from the political conceptions that led to their failure in the referendum, and their positing of a ‘left government’ – far from being realistic– is currently completely improbable. Their electoralism has now exhibited the same weaknesses as their competitors for votes, who do however have deeper roots among the classes they represent.

Most basically, to be ‘anti-establishment’ you actually have to oppose the establishment, not follow on its coattails mouthing grudging support for its empty politics.

The People before Profit statement declares at its beginning that for the Government parties “the referendum is a massive blow to their prestige and legitimacy”; but to quote John Donne again (in the more popular Ernest Hemingway version): “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Record Defeat for the Government in Family and Care Referendum

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“Woke is Dead”, read the banner. “It was all wokism demeaning window-dressing”, said the main voice of the ‘NO’ campaign, Michael McDowell, former Tánaiste and leader of the late and unlamented Progressive Democrats.

The Family and Care referendums, analysed previously here and here were massively defeated, the latter by the biggest ever No vote in a referendum. The amendment to the constitution on the family was defeated by 67.7 per cent of the votes and the care amendment by 73.9 per cent.

Both had been supported by the three government parties and by all but one of the opposition parties in the Dáil, including Labour, Social Democrats, Sinn Fein and People before Profit (PbP).  An ‘out-of-touch’ establishment turned out to include Sinn Fein and PbP, as well as several Non-Governmental Organisations, which supported a Yes vote.  The opposition parties all blamed the ineptness of the Government, a case not so much of rats leaving a sinking ship as jumping overboard when the ship was already at the bottom.  Sinn Fein ran so far away from the scene that it promised not to re-run the referendum, as it had previously promised if it was defeated.  It remains to be seen whether People before Profit will do the same and slink away from its similar promise in relation to ‘Care’.

The Irish Times sketch writer noted that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s acceptance of defeat was ‘a strangely nonchalant act of concession’, perfectly befitting the whole exercise, which was indeed “wokism demeaning window-dressing” but not only this.  The proposals also contained reactionary principles, as we set out in the two articles linked above.

On the family, it couldn’t tell anyone what the ‘durable relationships’ were that would receive constitutional ‘recognition’ or what this recognition would consist of, while it still claimed that ‘The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage’.  The Catholic right took this to be undermining the institution while others might have wondered how it was consistent with recognition of ‘durable relationships.’

The care amendment was bitterly opposed by some disability groups, who saw it as assigning responsibility for their care to their family and justifying the state’s abdication of any responsibility.  Varadkar let the cat out of the bag when he more or less accepted this interpretation in a media interview.

The referendum was rushed after having been delayed and without prior explanation or justification of the wording, which was deliberately withheld The debate in the Dáil was cut short with the vote pencilled in for International Women’s Day, which was taken by the electorate as a cynical ploy.

Varadkar stated that “the old adage is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan”, but one person’s defeat is another one’s victory and the reasons for the victory of the No side were several, not limited to the arrogance of the Government.  The No vote included the opposition of right-wing Catholic opinion that is still a significant, if minority, force, while generally progressive voices could see through the lip service given to change, the reactionary implications of some of the wording, and the noted absence of other words (the word woman for example).

The care referendum was more obviously retrogressive, which prompted a slightly higher no vote and coloured many people’s appreciation of what the whole exercise was about.  The impulse to purge the existing constitution of sexism, encapsulated by a woman’s ‘life within the home’, was not enough to prompt a Yes vote, and at bottom reflects the point we made before: that no matter how reactionary it is it is not the cause of women’s disadvantage but rather reflects it.

Blame for failure of the Yes side has consisted of the unclear wording of the amendments; their change from that recommended by the Citizen’s Assembly; the government’s ‘hubris over strategy and superficiality over substance’ (Una Mullally, The Irish Times); the ‘immediate plunge into legalistic arguments’ (Una Mullally again), and the supposed ‘narrow’ campaign on the Yes side.

Since the Yes campaign included all the political parties except the smallest, the base of the Yes campaign wasn’t small. However, what was demonstrated were the limitations of the state’s political representation, including of the so-called anti-establishment parties, especially Sinn Fein.  As for the wording, its superficiality and legalistic ‘entanglement that never unravelled’, these were not accidental but intrinsic to the intention of the amendments that the Government simultaneously claimed were symbolic (but important) and meaningful (but unthreatening to the status quo).  No wonder it lost. 

Determining the nature of the vote can sometimes be established by looking at the consequences, which one journalist has called ‘a vacuum’ and another that while “it might not be the end of gesture politics . . . it will certainly give would-be gesturers pause for thought in future.’ (Pat Leahy in The Irish Times) He provides the example of some NGOs proposals for economic and social rights to be included in the constitution.  This is something we have opposed before and consider to be a complete diversion, misdirection, miseducation, and waste of time.

The threat of new Hate legislation is also offered as something that has government TDs worried about their popularity, if the public have the opportunity to understand it. The Irish government has previously passed the Gender Recognition Act with minimum publicity so that no opposition was likely to raise the issue of women’s rights.  Getting away with this now is more problematic as the profession of ‘progressive’ intentions loses its capacity to silence critical thought.  The referendum vote has certainly achieved this and for this alone it is to be welcomed.

The Third Year of War (2 of 3)

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The presentation of the war in Ukraine in the Western media is exactly like that of the genocide in Gaza.  Just as history began with the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, so the ‘war’ in Gaza was started by Hamas on October 7, 2023.  Russia and Hamas are to blame.

The majority of the Left has correctly sought to put October 7 into context, to be understood as an almost inevitable explosion arising from brutal oppression.  In the case of Ukraine the context has all but been ignored, and in any event Russia is not an oppressed people and it had a choice.  Of course, both of these observations are true, which are some of the reasons why Sráid Marx has not supported the Russian invasion, but this does not excuse the failure of the pro-war left to provide a coherent explanation of why the invasion took place.

Their impoverished attempts to do so, based on the flawed understanding of history and megalomaniacal mental disposition of Vladimir Putin, is about as useful for the task as depending on the flawed understanding of Jewish history and psychopathic tendencies of Benjamin Netanyahu to explain Israeli actions, or the antisemitic, crazed impulse for revenge of Hamas.  Personalising such causes, or placing the onus on the inhuman character of those you don’t like, prevents understanding of the real causes and in this case avoids having to account for the interests of the Russian state, consideration of which might invite deliberation on those of the Ukrainian and Western states.  This might lead to comparisons between them that would dissolve the simple narrative of big against small, good facing evil, and freedom opposing oppression.

This year is the tenth anniversary of the Maidan demonstrations and occupation, which is sometimes given as context to, and presented as the start of, the Russian aggression, although this is a particularly difficult ‘revolution’ for the left to hang its coat upon.  This ‘revolution of dignity’ was based on the illusion that an EU association agreement would lead to Western standards of living, and put an end to corruption with the introduction of democracy, so that the then Ukrainian President was wrong to accept the alternative offer from Russia and attempt to repress the popular movement by force.

Unfortunately, such a story of a pure democratic movement repressed by a Russian proxy does no justice to the events, as explained before here and here.  These include the issues raised in prior attempts to negotiate a deal with the EU, Russia making a better offer, and the EU deal threatening the livelihoods of millions of workers in uncompetitive industries in the East of the country.  The Maidan uprising was not therefore universally supported but was based on liberal illusions and sponsorship by the US, including by Western backed NGOs.

The occupation of the Square was led by far-right forces that may well have been to blame for the final massacre.  The oligarchic Government and state that arose out of this ‘revolution’ continued to be riddled with corruption and was a creature moulded at least in part by the US, including through collaboration with its secret police, the SBU.  Even this Ukrainian supporter of the war cannot help admitting that the Maidan revolt was highjacked by the right.

From 2014 Ukraine built up a large army and adopted a policy of recovering Crimea and the other areas in the East occupied by Russia.  Integration into NATO began and the penetration of the US through its usual vehicles, such as the CIA, has been admitted even by a US publication that cannot be accused of providing excuses for Russia.  This source makes it abundantly clear that the Ukrainian state was a willing proxy for US imperialism long before the Russian invasion and that 24 February 2022 was very definitely not the ‘first shot’.

This function continues and has increased enormously through the war.  Speaking about the role of the CIA at its commencing, Ivan Bakanov, then head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, stated that  “Without them, there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them”.  

The details of this, disclosed by The New York Times, were “a closely guarded secret for a decade”, including from the Ukrainian people.  What this demonstrates is that the Ukrainian state and political regime–that the pro-war left in the West supports–walked the Ukrainian people into a war in a process of which they were blissfully ignorant.  It proves yet again the old socialist adage that the main enemy is at home.

This left has been unable to tell the difference between the Ukrainian state, people and working class, and has loudly declared the ‘agency’ of Ukraine against charges of the war being a proxy one on behalf of Western imperialism.  It is surely beyond doubt that the price paid to become part of NATO isn’t worth it.  It is also clear what agency has been active in Ukraine before and during the war, and thus bears some responsibility for it, although this is an agency the pro-war left would like to deny.

The Ukrainian state worked against the interests of the Ukrainian people, and it behoves socialists to explain this and to work towards the working class in the country acting as an agency on its own behalf, not as cannon-fodder for the capitalist state.  The pro-war left that declares its defence of the Ukrainian people and working class can’t do this because it can’t tell the difference between their separate interests and so never makes a real distinction between them. Since the working class has no independent organisation separate and opposed to the Ukrainian state the left supports the state, while lip service is paid to working class interests that are never political but simply express economistic demands compatible with, in fact subordinated to, the war.

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in November 2021, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced a ‘Strategic Partnership’ with Ukraine that included a commitment to supporting its objective of taking the territory lost to Russia, including Crimea.  On the 17th December Russia sent an ultimatum demanding a reduction of Western military deployments in Eastern Europe and an official end to attempts to bring Ukraine into NATO.  Inside Ukraine, Zelensky sanctioned three ‘pro-Russian’ TV channels and arrested the opposition leader, Viktor Medvedchuk. He demanded new and immediate sanctions, and questioned why Ukraine didn’t have an ‘open door’ into NATO given that it was functioning as Europe’s ‘reliable shield’ against Russia.  The dynamic towards war and Western involvement was set, explaining why the invasion did not come out of the blue from the deranged mind of a Russian dictator.

The immediate UK media response was to paint Russia’s Special Military Operation as a ‘full-scale invasion’ that aimed to invade and occupy the whole country, with Reuters reporting that “Ukraine’s forces no match for Russia in manpower, gear and experience.”  Russia was, after all, the great bear threatening the whole Western world and prime justification for the creation and existence of NATO.

Since the total Russian invading army was smaller than the Ukrainian, and much smaller when the latter’s reserves were included, this did not make much sense, since we all learned that a ratio of at least 3 to 1 was required for the attacking force.  Russia launched 600 airstrikes in the first ten days, far fewer than the 2,000 strikes launched in the first days of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Two years later, the civilian deaths attributed to Russia are around 10,000, less than one third of those inflicted by the Israeli state in less than a quarter of the time.  While the former led to massive economic sanctions; unprecedented supply of weapons and ammunition that drained the stock of materiel from the Western world; billions of dollars and Euros in financial support, and supply of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); in Gaza it led to sanctions, weapons, finance and ISR as well, except the sanctioned were those being massacred and the assistance went to those committing the genocide.

One might think that this would torpedo Western justification for supporting Ukraine, at least among the left, but this didn’t happen, even when the Ukrainian state declared its solidarity with the Israeli state and the Israeli state reciprocated.

Presenting the Russian offensive as a ‘full-scale invasion’ that aimed to occupy the whole country made it possible for Western ‘experts’ to repeatedly denounce it as a failure when this very obviously wasn’t happening. Russia’s characterisation of it as a ‘Special Military Operation’ (that did not require full scale mobilisation beforehand) was derided as simply a dishonest pretence.

Since the West ensured that quick ceasefire negotiations in March 2022 were torpedoed, and promises were made to support Ukraine in a fight to the end, the Russian state then did much of what the western media claimed it had already done.  It expanded its military-industrial complex and mobilised hundreds of thousands of new troops, which the Western media denounced without acknowledging that this was already supposed to have happened.

The media, having predicted a quick Russian victory, then took to ridiculing the incompetence of the Russian forces, reporting its massive casualties and hailing its coming total defeat.  Their retreat from Kyiv was hailed as a huge reverse, as was the later retreat from much of Kharkiv in the East and Kherson in the West.  This ignored that fighting around Kyiv was more a series of skirmishes than a massive full-frontal assault; that the loss of significant territory in Kharkiv was due to thin defences that proved the invasion had not been ‘full-scale’, and that the retreat back across the Dnieper was a well-executed manoeuvre that made perfect sense from a military point of view.

None of this means that these were not victories for Ukraine, but they were not the disasters for Russia painted in the West.  Influential media like Foreign Affairs carried articles such as “How Not to Invade a Nation” while Russia Matters declared “No End in Sight to Beginning of Putin’s End”. Russian advances were written off–“Russia’s Capture of Azovstal: Symbolic Success, ‘Pyrrhic’ Victory?” said Radio Liberty Europe.

The British media reported that “Vladimir Putin’s total defeat is now within reach”, according to The Telegraph on 8 Sept  2022.

“Putin is finished. The Ukrainians have him on the ropes” in The Telegraph, on 11 Sept 2022 .

“Humiliation for Vladimir Putin as Ukrainians liberate key city of Lyman” said The Guardian on 1 Oct 2022, and

Ukrinform on 19 November 2022 stated that “Defense Ministry predicts Ukrainian forces be back in Crimea by end of December”.

This obviously biased and ignorant approach continued with the promise, repeatedly delayed, of a Ukrainian offensive in the spring of 2023.  Russia was apparently not only running out of missiles (repeatedly) and had suffered horrendous losses of men and tanks, but the low morale of its troops could mean a rapid victory for the new NATO armed and trained Ukrainian brigades.

In the event, Russia continued to fire its missiles at various levels of intensity; its first defences were hardly reached never mind breached, and the morale of the Russian army held while that of Ukraine fell following the utter failure of the offensive and the high level of losses incurred. It appeared, after it was all over, that during the offensive Russia had captured as much territory as Ukraine.

There then began the claim that the war was at a stalemate, with little territorial gains by either side, while stories of repeated meat grinder assaults causing horrific casualties were attributed to the Russians that had in fact become a feature of the previous Ukrainian offensive.  This was combined with incompatible stories about the considerable Russian advantage in artillery in what was characterised as a war of position.  Pro-Russian propaganda pointed out that this was precisely the Russian strategy – of degrading Ukrainian forces rather than seeking territorial gains, which would ultimately follow.

The only way to gain any appreciation of the state of the conflict from a military point of view was to look at this propaganda (with a critical eye).  This, of course, was not something the pro-war and Pro-Ukraine left was inclined to do.  The defeat at Bakhmut was thus the story of the loss of a strategically unimportant town and not that of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, while the grinding war of attrition was still a stalemate at a time when Russia was making more advances than the previous heralded Ukrainian assaults.  Reading Western coverage of the war was like reading a crime novel in which pro-Russian outlets had already revealed in previous months who had been killed, how they had been killed and who was guilty.

Even now, the story is being told that Ukraine is losing only because of lack of resolve by the West and that victory is still possible. More weapons and ammunition should be supplied even though it is now admitted that neither the troops to wield them, nor the materiel itself, exist in sufficient quantity.  This leads to the siren calls for NATO infantry on the ground and NATO aircraft in the sky.  This became another illustration of the claim that if Ukraine falls the rest of Europe will be next, while having claimed during most of the last two years that Russia was losing.

Repeated lies by the Western media, its contradictory claims and their clash with reality should have caused the more fundamental lies about the nature of the war to be questioned and rejected.  However, having swallowed Western imperialist explanation and justification for the war, the pro-war Left by and large also became subject to the illusions peddled about its course. They have become stuck in support for a proxy war that has the potential to escalate catastrophically and a political position that can only oppose catastrophe when the grounds for it have already been created.

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Forward to part 3

The Third Year of War (1 of 3)

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The second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to several retrospective summaries of the war and recapitulation of the arguments about its justification.  This should have involved an examination of the various claims made about its course over the two years and how they stand up today, but this was studiously avoided.  If we take even a cursory look at these claims, we can see how the lies told by the Western media about the war have increasingly been shredded by reality. Instead of winning against a stupid and incompetent Russia the all-powerful NATO might be losing? But let us come to that presently.

The genocide in Gaza has to a great extent eclipsed the war while the bias and lying of the Western media has increasingly been impossible to hide.  That the BBC live-streamed the Israeli case at the International Court of Justice but not the South African is just one example. While driving my car this morning Sky News reported that one hundred Palestinians had just ‘died’, which must be taken to refer to the killing by the Israeli army of their desperately starving victims attempting to get food from one of the few aid convoys the Zionists allowed through.

All this should provide grounds for clarifying the nature of the war in Ukraine but instead these have been treated as two entirely separate happenings, including by much of the left, which supports the actions of the United States in one and damns it in the other; excuses its intervention in one and rejects all its excuses in the other.  And we are supposed to believe this makes sense.

So, the war in Ukraine is the war in Ukraine; and the genocide in Gaza is but the latest murderous assault on the Palestinian people that must be addressed by a Palestinian solidarity movement. The long adopted method of single issue campaigns, designed supposedly to involve the maximum number of people, is exposed as divorced from reality.  Rather than help explain the world, it fragments reality and is an obstacle to understanding it.  Without such understanding the fundamental cause of war – capitalism – will forever lurk in the background, smothered by the appearance of this or that conflict, inviting this or that ‘solution’ that often relies on the criminals who caused it.

Much of the Western left has supported the Ukrainian state, and Western intervention, which is now accepted in Washington and Kyiv as the only thing keeping it going, with repeated threats that it will lose very soon if Western weapons do not continue to come.  Since money on its own does not kill Russians the reckless sponsorship of the war has been exposed because the Western powers no longer have the ammunition or other war materiel to keep Ukraine fighting.

Zelensky promises a new offensive in 2025 but the integrity of his armed forces might not last that long. Western powers are scrounging ammunition from various parts of the globe, but these simply mean that Ukrainians will keep on fighting and dying a little longer.  The alternative is the provision of more advanced weapons such as longer-range missiles and F-16 aircraft but these cross previous red lines, risk Russian retaliatory escalation and will not lead to Ukrainian victory.  In turn this risks further Ukrainian attempts to provoke greater Western intervention.

Threats to directly intervene with troops on the ground have only revealed that some have already been there and many of them have been killed.  A Russian officer has already stated that “NATO military personnel, under the guise of mercenaries, participate in hostilities. They control air defence systems, tactical missiles and multiple launch rocket systems, and are part of assault detachments.” The loss of over 60 French ‘mercenaries’ has already been reported in Kharkiv.  Now the German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz has let slip that the British and French are using their own troops to target and fire their missiles.  And someone else has revealed discussions within the German armed forces to attack Russia.

What successes Ukraine have achieved, such as the sinking of Russian warships and scarce and expensive surveillance aircraft, could only have been accomplished with Western systems, intelligence and personnel.  The most advanced weapons systems can only be used effectively by forces trained and familiar with them while their servicing and maintenance requires similar support. None of this has prevented increasingly rapid Russian advances on the ground.

Stopping, and reversing, this could not be achieved even by French, German, British or US troops on the ground without creation of a massive intervention force that these countries are currently in no position to construct and employ.  This has not excluded repeated announcements of the possibility of Western troops being sent to take part directly in the fighting.  This, even if on a limited scale, has the potential to lead to a World War.  The piloting of F-16 fighters by NATO pilots, with the green light by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to attack targets in Russia, shows one path to escalation and war.

The prospect of Western infantry in Ukraine raised by Macron and shot down by others reflects awareness of the possibility of defeat, which Biden in particular has cause to fear, if this becomes clear before the November Presidential election. Even If Western escalation were partial, limited to occupation of Western Ukraine, Russia has the capacity to continue to move forward to achieving its aims, which would be expanded to account for a Western incursion. 

Left supporters of the Ukrainian state face the defeat of what has, politically, become their own proxy in their imagined progressive struggle alongside Western imperialism.  The presumed priority of Russian defeat would require massive Western imperialist intervention, with the risks discussed, and serves to justify the most reactionary nationalism in Eastern Europe (to be covered later).

Given the nature of the parties involved, exemplified in the massive disparity in power of the two forces, it is not Western imperialism that has become a proxy for the Left but the Left that has become a bourgeois proxy within the socialist movement.  Such is the position this pro-imperialist Left has put itself by supporting a pro-Western capitalist state in a war and by also supporting the assistance provided to it by Western imperialism.

The split personality of this left can be seen in their support in the case of Ukraine and opposition in the case of Palestine, as if all the Western powers are confused as to what is in their interests.  This disorder is as real for those that straight-forwardly support Ukraine and deny the proxy nature of the war as it is for those who directly express their confusion by both supporting the capitalist Ukrainian state while opposing the assistance of the capitalist states supporting it.

Defence of the Palestinian people will not be advanced by upholding in Ukraine the imperialist supporters of the Zionist state that is carrying out genocide, or by claiming that it is capable of playing a progressive role in one but not the other.

Of course, the genocide in Gaza is immediately more obvious and easier to argue, and especially more convenient for the moralistic approach that single-issue campaigns rely upon.  But for exactly this reason it is important to show how the two require the same approach and are not two single issues but two expressions of the one oppressive system that must face one combined struggle against it.

Both are wars by proxies of US imperialism in order to defend its hegemonic position in Europe and the Middle East.  Both reveal the poverty of its putative capitalist rivals.  The Russian invasion is incapable of stirring the sympathy of the workers of the world, and China, as the ultimate target of the US, cannot politically defend the Russian invasion.  In the case of Gaza, these putative leaders of the alternative pole of imperialist power have stood aside while the Zionist state commits genocide.  Russia and China have not made even a significant symbolic gesture by expelling the Israeli ambassador, while its BRICS associate, Saudi Arabia, has facilitated trade with Israel to nullify the efforts of the Houthis in Yemen to block it.  Iran has been as keen as the US to limit its opposition through its allies so that it can avoid war between them.

In both cases the Left, of almost all shades, sees no role for socialism in ending these capitalist wars but puts forward purely formal democratic proposals that do not go beyond capitalist solutions and have no bearing on reality. This includes the demand for ‘self-determination’ for Ukraine when the part of it allied to the West is already utterly reliant and subordinated to it.

In Gaza, the renewed murder and displacement of Palestinians has revived the debate over a two state or one state solution, neither of which are socialist and neither of which address the over-reaching power of the Zionist state, its US sponsors, or the opposition of the autocratic Arab regimes, which oppose the creation of any democratic Palestinian state lest it act as a beacon of inspiration for their own oppressed populations.

The hypocrisy that has been exposed by the two conflicts is a starting point to enlightening working people about the depraved and ruthless nature of the societies they live in, and that the scope and scale of the barbarity exposed is not accidental but is a fundamental feature.  This means that only a complete reordering of society will work and that this is what the socialist alternative involves.  If capitalist war does not demand and call for a socialist alternative then activists opposed to these wars will never be able to promise that one day they will end.

Forward to part 2

Marxism and Gender Identity Ideology (1) – Introduction

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Last year during a break in the local anti-war meeting there was a short disagreement about the transgender issue.  The woman could barely conceal her disdain for the idea that men could claim to be women by wearing a dress and lipstick (as she put it).  The man thought that it was an important issue that had to be addressed.

The woman was primarily a Palestine solidarity activist but recognised the war in Ukraine as one in which hundreds of thousands of people were being killed and that had the potential to escalate with catastrophic results for the world.  The man thought the issue had important implications for women’s rights and should be taken up by socialists.

This brought to mind the passage in ‘What is to be Done’ by Lenin ‘that the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects…’ 

So, the questions that naturally arise are about the demands that are raised by the trans activist movement and whether socialists should support them. We can start by looking at the Gender Identity ideology that grounds the politics of the movement and their ‘allies’.

Not all trans people support the same demands or Gender Identity ideology, and this ideology has various features and makes dissimilar claims.  What is hardly in dispute however, is that trans people should not be subject to unjustified discrimination or violence, and deserve respect based on our common humanity.  The specific claims of Gender Identity ideology are particular to a certain strain of trans political activism and make claims which go beyond this response.

In a series of articles in the British ‘Weekly Worker’ these issues are addressed, and in the fourth part the author writes–‘I use ‘trans people’ for the present purposes to mean people who wish to live permanently in the gender identity polar opposite to that ascribed to the biological sex in which they were born.’

At first reading this can be taken to mean that the issue is men, for example, who wish to live as women. Except, if this were the issue there would hardly be a dispute.  Few are going to object to men wearing women’s’ clothes, make-up etc. and presenting themselves as women, in so far as they are able, in their everyday lives.

Gender identity ideology asserts much more than this; it asserts, for example, that men are women if they consider – ‘identify’– as women.  As the mantra goes – ‘transwomen are women’.  This is stated, not as a metaphor, but as a literal truth.

This is the main problem with the definition as presented in the ‘Weekly Worker’; if we must assume that the word gender in ‘gender identity’ means something other than what it has (until this controversy) been traditionally regarded to mean – as simply another word for sex.  Instead, it is a word that is employed to substitute for sex and thereby erase it. In the next few occasional posts I will look at the ideology and the claims of the movement, beginning by asking what ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’ mean.

Forward to part 2