Monthly Archives: May 2025

Visiting Munich and encountering Palestine

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My first walk in Munich city centre from Sendlinger Tor U-Bahn station led me to the town hall in Marienplatz from which three banners hung, all upholding Western imperialism.

The first was the flag of Israel, the Zionist state carrying out the most visible genocide in history now promoted by the city authorities where the Nazi party was founded and where it maintained its headquarters until 1945.  Where Hitler launched his beer hall putsch in 1923 and the first concentration camp was created at Dachau.

The second was the flag of Ukraine, home to the most violent neo-Nazi movement in Europe, once recognised by the Western liberal media but now buried by that same media and celebrated as a leading section of the Ukrainian ‘resistance’ which Western liberalism now parades as the vanguard of the fight for democracy.  The banner of Ukraine hangs appropriately beside that of Israel as its President Zelensky has hailed the Zionist state as a model for Ukraine to emulate.

The middle banner was promotion of Mayors for Peace, which neatly parades the hypocrisy of Western imperialism and its liberal pieties.

Of course, Germany is not defined only by its Nazi past or the proclivity of the German state to sanction genocide.  A couple of recent opinion polls record that a majority of Germans oppose arms exports to Israel and oppose the genocide, with nearly 60 percent also opposed to supplying Ukraine with Taurus missiles.  Even Munich has a different history, having been home to a short-lived workers revolution in 1919.

There is more than one Germany and I was pleased when I later came across a Palestine solidarity stall on Sendlinger Straße on my way to Marienplatz again.  The Palestinian woman at the stall told me how difficult it was to carry out campaigning – “up in court” all the time – and that there was a demonstration later in the afternoon.

The rally had around 500 people, which isn’t large for a city the size of Munich, with a large number being what I took to be Palestinian.  A number of speeches were made, all in German except for one in English by a young man of Palestinian extraction who appeared German by his accent.

He gave a powerful speech condemning Western imperialist responsibility for the genocide and condemning the settler colonial Zionist state based on his own family’s story of dispossession.  He condemned the demand that the Palestinians resist along the approved lines of Western liberals and stated accurately that asking politely for their rights would make no difference.  He called for workers, their unions and students to take action.  He also declared that all types of resistance were justified.

Some people can speak powerfully with emotion without losing the ability to articulate their argument and he was such a speaker.  His anger was palpable but so was the feeling that he spoke with a degree of desperation. This is not a criticism, since the plight of the Palestinian people is desperate.  It is not possible to argue that what they are enduring is genocide with no sign of it ending soon, without acknowledging that their situation is urgent and tragic.

The most recent muffled admonishment of Israel by the likes of Starmer and Mertz is even more nauseous than their previous hypocrisy for it signals that not even the grudging and muted acceptance of the reality of genocide will see them take any relevant action.  The speaker’s knowledge that it is Western imperialism that is ultimately responsible makes such awareness unavoidable, which is why he called for an anti-imperialist struggle.

Unfortunately, no anti-imperialist struggle is currently taking place.  Some think one is being carried out by Russia (in Ukraine) and by China but their indifference to the suffering of the Palestinian people simply illustrates the reactionary character of these capitalist states.  That some fake socialists think Western imperialism can actually play an anti-imperialist role (in Ukraine!) demonstrates the bizarre and crooked character of their ’anti-imperialism’.

Liberals have criticised Netanyahu because he has not set out a plan for the day after – when his war aims have been achieved.  The problem is that the issue is not Netanyahu and what we are looking at is not a war but a genocide. The Zionist ‘solution’ is not what comes after genocide but is genocide. In this sense there is no ‘day after’, which will simply be expulsion of those who haven’t been killed, however arranged, however comprehensive and to whatever timeline adopted.

The speaker in Munich understood that the meaning of genocide was the end of any pretence to a two state solution.  Of course, this has never been a solution and has been employed by Western imperialism as an alibi for colonial aggression, but the genocide also signals the death of a one state solution i.e. an imperialist imposed bourgeois state encompassing both the Jewish and Palestinian people.

The speech, for all the truth it contained, left two nagging doubts.  The first was the criticism of the reactionary Arab regimes that have done less than nothing for the Palestinian people, where he called out three states.  This included Morocco and the UAE with one other that I can’t recall.  It did not include the biggest – Egypt – or Saudi Arabia or many others.  Yet liberation of the Palestinian people is inseparable from the liberation of the working classes of all these countries, through the destruction of all the rotten regimes and the capitalist states that they sit upon.

The second was the statement that all types of resistance are justified.  But justification is not effectiveness and approval of all is a sign that there has been no identification of which one is central, what strategy lies behind it and how it should be pursued.

Back in Ireland I returned to read about the latest pronouncement of the gobshite Bono who managed to make Israel the victim (of Netanyahu) while calling for peace.  Less gross, but in reality worse, is the hypocrisy of the Irish bourgeoisie promising yet again to take the miniscule action they have promised for years and which is now so obviously damning in its pathetic inadequacy.

The responsibility of Western imperialism for genocide with this support and its hypocrisy on display in Munich and also the opposition to it, drives home the international character of the struggle against imperialism.  Too often, however, this is not against all imperialism, is not against capitalism – which is often treated as something separate – and does not identify the force for change and the socialist politics that define it. The popular opposition to genocide among the population of Europe alongside the widespread complicity of European states shows that a struggle is required against these states and not just the war and genocide abroad that they are complicit in.

Left reaction to the ‘discovery’ that a woman is an adult human female (4) – questions and answers

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Of all the misconceptions and egregious nonsense in the responses of the left to the UK supreme court judgment the most irrational I have seen comes from the Fourth International and its British organisation Anti-Capitalist Resistance.

The former asks a number of questions as if these on their own expose the falsehood of the court decision but which really require only straight forward answers from anyone not immersed in gender identity ideology.

“What of the practical impacts that this ruling will have on cis women?” it asks.

The impacts are that single sex spaces will be open only to women and exclude men.  This means no men in women’s prisons, no men in women’s refuges, and no men in women’s sports etc.  Something taken for granted in the previous century during which no one was claiming that this involved women’s oppression – quite the reverse.

“What do we tell our young women when we say, ‘a woman is only biological sex’, that a man is also only biological sex?” 

Who is claiming that any woman or man is only a biological woman or biological man regardless of their other qualities, experiences and achievements?  What Marxists affirm is that, just like the assumption in the question itself, humanity is made up of women and men, and most will know that the distinction between them arises solely from their biological difference.

This reality does not at all mean, as this organisation seems to claim, “that because of a man’s biological sex, he is right to partake in oppressive structures of male hierarchy? That his desire to rape and sexually assault women is justified because of his biology?”  The biology of men does not mean that “oppressive structures” and “desires” are inevitable and if the Fourth International thinks the biological reality of humanity necessitates such structures, how then is it going to negate this biological reality and destroy these structures?

Does it think that gender identity is the answer to such ‘structures and desires?’  Does it seek to compel or convince everyone to adopt a gender identity that dispenses with their knowledge of their biological nature?  Would this not be an admission that it is they who wish to narrow young women and men’s understanding of themselves to a ‘gender identity’ that many reject they even have?

Anti-Capitalist Resistance states that trans “existence directly challenges the social order, which is structured by gendered power relations”, but fails to explain how identifying as the opposite sex (regardless of what that really means) actually changes “gendered power relations”, unless the gendered identities adopted are not those of real existing men and women that it currently argues constitute these “oppressive structures.” In other words, in their world in which sex is unimportant, but gender is decisive and in which we still have gender oppression, how will such oppression be ended simply by some (or all) identifying as the other (irrelevant!) sex?  Unless, that is, transmen aren’t actually identifying as men with all their claimed oppressive desires and transwomen aren’t really identifying as women with all their experience of oppressive structures.

Anti-Capitalist Resistance further claims that feminism seeks to overcome the view “that biology is destiny”, but only the adherents of gender identity ideology are arguing that biology is destiny, which is why they attempt the false claim that it can be dismissed.

Biology isn’t destiny in the way they claim – that it necessarily involves social oppression – but it is reality.  Biology is reality and if biology is physically and socially unimportant why does gender identity ideology base itself on being able to identify into the other sex with whatever physical changes that an individual believes they can make (with or without medical and surgical intervention)?

If these ideologists really want to stick to the claim that biology is not destiny I have an additional concept for them – death.

This organisation further claims that feminism opposes ideas “that bodily autonomy is socially dangerous” and “that organising social reproductive work on gendered lines is “natural”.  Yet the foundation of human reproduction is biological – one hundred percent of people reading this blog will be born to a woman.  The claim to autonomy is meant to evoke the rights of women to abortion but this autonomy – this independence and freedom – refers to the right to choose, which then requires the recognition by others for its effective exercise.  Trans people, as autonomous individuals, can think of themselves in any way they like but they cannot by this alone compel the world to accept their view of themselves and act upon it without violating everyone else’s right to the same autonomy. 

The Fourth International asks some more straight forward questions even more simply answered.

“How do you balance sex characteristics with gender reassignment characteristics?”  – Since these are separate characteristics, no balancing is required, the latter does not alter the essential nature of the former. 

“How do you prove sex discrimination when you are not recognized as that sex?”  – You can’t.

The Fourth International states that without this ideology we would have “an absurd ahistorical view of the working class as a homogenised lump that apparently never had gender queer people, or gay people or drag queens among its ranks.”  It sticks out a mile that women are absent from the list but yet another category of men pretending to be women is included.  That the history of the Marxist movement, going back to the man himself, has recognised the special oppression of women, and sought their organisation, is lost.  Instead, we have the truly ahistorical view of the working class in which we have something called ‘cis women’, and trans women whose very existence somehow “directly challenges the social order.”

For a Marxist the issue is also the claim that “There will be no revolution without trans liberation!”  Except, if this were true it would require the erasure of the female sex as a separate part (half!!) of humanity with all their specific oppression and need to organise.  It would also require abandoning any critical thought, with acceptance of the claim that ‘transwomen are women’ with no debate allowed over what are palpably untrue claims because of hyperbolic rhetoric and juvenile name calling.

Marx once said that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.’  The left supporters of gender identity ideology think they can change it by reinterpretation but since the real world is a stubborn thing it cannot be changed by declaration, and it cannot even be reinterpreted by incantation of inane slogans or without debate.  The attempt to silence opposition by naming the gender critical left as ‘fascist’ or ‘transphobic’ is another illustration of denying reality and attempt to close down challenges to its imagined world of changing sex and many genders.

The demonisation of opponents however is only a device to buttress a position already acquired because adherents have accepted that gender identity ideology is ‘progressive’; to stand against it would see individuals also stand against those they would normally stand beside.  Support for the ideology no longer depends on rational argument because it is simply considered to be the ‘left wing’ position; it is left wing because I/she/he/we are left wing and therefore so must it.  It is circular reasoning, and a form of identity politics inoculated from reality by a form of solipsism.  The exploitation of their mistake by the right is then held aloft as ‘proof’ of their position’s left credentials.

The phenomenon of a political position being held up as left wing because so much of the left supports it has been seen before; as previously much of the left capitulated to Scottish nationalism and is now capitulating to western imperialism through support for Ukraine, both of which are their unlikely candidates as beacons of ‘democracy’ for the world.

It’s a case of political gangrene that occurs ‘as a result of an injury, infection or a long-term condition that affects blood circulation’.  The defeats of the working class and its movement are the injury; the infection is petty bourgeois politics, and these long term factors have affected the circulation of critical thought and Marxism.

Concluded

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Left reaction to the ‘discovery’ that a woman is an adult human female (3) –  a far-right victory?

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Alex Callinicos from the Socialist Workers Party writes that the ‘latest attack on trans people in Britain is part of a global offensive driven by the far right.’  Having created the narrative that only the far right opposes gender identity ideology he starts off his attack on the supreme court decision by claiming that For Women Scotland is a far right movement!  I suppose if your whole position rests on a refusal to recognise reality you find it easier to just keep on going.  Where would the gender identity left be without the claim that the recognition of the reality of being a woman is a far right programme? 

But this is just the first fiction in what is a very short article.  The most amusing is when Callinicos states that ‘Judith Butler puts it very well’! – apparently when she says that the transphobes seek “the restoration of a patriarchal dream-order”.  So, the erasure of the separate identity and reality of women, with all their rights and claims, by men is a strike against patriarchy!

The most becoming fiction for a professor who has written many books on Marxism is the following slippery circumlocution: 

‘The intellectual core of Marxism is historical materialism. It doesn’t in the slightest ignore our variable biological constitution but integrates this into the broader historical process through which human beings form and are formed by their societies.”

This involves a reference to a Marxist term, including the word “materialism”, followed by a sentence that doesn’t have the courage to say what it means – that men can become, or already are, women.  So instead, we are to swallow that our biology is “variable” and we are integrated into history and “formed” by it.  All very true, except our biology is not so variable that it means men are or can become women, or is it the case that “the broader historical process” has or can (trans)form men into women.

It is not necessary to believe that “women’s oppression” can be “reduced . .  to biology” to recognise that it is biology that makes women separate from men (and vice versa) in the first place.  Without these biological differences there would not exist the grounds upon which oppression could be built.  Women’s liberation will not remove biological differences, but Callinicos presents a view that oppression can exist without them.

His article is testament to Brandolini’s law that the amount of energy (and words) needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. He repeats, for example, the nonsense that the supreme court decision fails to bring “clarity and confidence.”  He has both forgotten the previous ease by which men and women could find the appropriate facilities, such as toilets, while also forgetting about the confidence the ruling gives women who might enter a facility to find a man who may or may not be trans (since she cannot read minds) and may be apprehensive about their presence whether trans or not.

As I mentioned in the first post, the rights of women are invisible to the left that adheres to gender identity ideology.  Even if every woman somehow identified as a man, they would still be prey to sexual assault, still experience childbearing and still face sexism despite some new name for it having to be invented.  Whatever new name would need to reflect reality and to exclude men identifying as women since they would not experience it.  But then, even this would be seen by the gender identity movement as discriminatory and lessening the ‘womanhood’ of transwomen. 

In an example of a recurring characteristic of the movement – that the allegations of gender identity ideology are actually admissions, Callinicos argues that “the far-right drive against “gender ideology” is aimed at reinstating the traditional heteronormative family.’” This charge is one he would presumably level at everyone who denies the veracity of gender identity ideology, including socialists who recognise the centrality of human biology to human existence and potential.  In fact, this argument against heteronormativity rebounds on the supporters of gender identity ideology.

In so far as the term has any positive content – that it privileges heterosexuality by denigrating same sex attraction – it is gender identity ideology that turns sexual stereotypes into the measure of humanity through self-identification and through, for example, permitting men identifying as women to claim to be lesbians.  In effect, same sex attraction is abolished to the extent that sex is rendered irrelevant or subsidiary to gender identity.

In a final example, he claims that “supporting trans+ liberation therefore has nothing to do with “identity politics”.  As I noted before, if gender identity ideology, self-identification, and men becoming women by identifying as one is not identity politics, nothing is.

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Left reaction to the ‘discovery’ that a woman is an adult human female (2) – the ‘usurpation of Parliament’

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After accounting for all the explanations for the success of gender identity ideology on the left – opportunism, moralistic politics, petty bourgeois influences etc. – it is still difficult to fully comprehend its success.  It is one thing to make a mistake and to find it uncomfortable to reconsider and change one’s view, partly because of the censorious culture of tans activism summed up in the demand “no debate.”  It is quite another to come out with the nonsense polemics that characterise the attempts to defend it.

It invites the thought that if some left groups can justify this (including to themselves) they can justify anything.  Mistakes are common, refusing to learn from them is fatal, and the series of factors that are explanations for the mistake are revealed as permanently conditioning.

If we look at some of the reactions to the UK supreme court decision, we can see evidence of gender critical feminists’ repeated observation that for some, contact with this issue seems to turn their brains to mush.

One ideologue of the British Weekly Worker made a presentation in opposition to the supreme court decision in which he essentially says that the court usurped the prerogatives of parliament when it interpreted the meaning of sex in biological terms, in effect re-interpreting the conscious decision of parliament when it passed the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.  Sex, in legislation, has different meanings depending on its purpose and does not require a single ‘coherent’ definition as argued by the supreme court, or so he says.

While he recognises sex as biology, for example in relation to the difference in the incidence of breast cancer in men compared to women, and in women compared to men in prostate cancer (in women’s Skene’s glands), he disagrees that sex is defined by biology or that there are only two sexes. In justification he points to intersex people, ignoring that differences/disorders in sexual development (DSDs) are a biological phenomenon and people with DSDs are either male or female and not a third sex.

He also fails to notice that intersex is irrelevant to the issue because no one is self-identifying as intersex but as a woman or man; even as they deny the biological nature of these terms men identifying as women fetishise elements of female biology.  It cannot be escaped that to identify as a woman is to identify with their biological character, often in stereotypes of secondary sex characteristics; through delusional ‘experience’ of menstruation or menopause, or artificially replicating female functions such as breast feeding.

He is left with the problem of justifying self-identification with any of the other innumerable genders invented by the ideology, which can only have one ‘definition’, and it isn’t biological sex.  What purposes are these to be legitimately legislated for, and if none, what does this imply for the validity of gender self-identification in toto?

In relation to the question of usurpation of parliament by the reinterpretation of the meaning of sex, he ridicules the view that the word ‘sex’ can be subject to interpretation based on its ‘ordinary meaning’.  He claims that this leads only to an “arbitrary and unsatisfactory decision” (a “dodgy” decision) and is precisely what is to be decided, not assumed. 

It is, however, the case that the word ’sex’ does have an ordinary meaning and that it would be extraordinary that it should have a another one so radically different yet dependent and parasitic upon it. Given, on top of this, the novelty of self-identification as a route to defining a woman, and that it would therefore have an unstable meaning such that it could include men as a particular sort of women – a transwoman – it is difficult to claim that an interpretation based on the age-old ordinary meaning is “arbitrary” or “dodgy”, even if supporters of gender identity ideology think it is “unsatisfactory.”

In this case “unsatisfactory” pertains to the consequences of the decision, which involves the surrendering of claims by men so as to be able to assert the rights of women.  The problem the gender identity left has is that the latter is invisible because they have accepted the invisible justifications of the claims of certain men.

As for the integrity of parliament and the rigour and cogency of its decisions! Backbenchers of the Government will generally vote whatever way is in the interests of their career, which is with the government.  Whatever they thought they were doing with the concept (and real world consequences) of “sex”, I don’t recall any mandate for changing it in 2004.  As for today’s argument, it would appear that even the Labour Party’s ‘LGBTQ+’ MPs are not keen to proclaim that transwomen really are women.

The exceedingly legalistic lecture gives the impression of hitting the target of the supreme court adjudication but missing the political point.  It is argued that the reasoning employed by the court is appropriate only for a parliament when what needs to concern him is not the integrity of the division of powers in the British state – the executive branch breaks the law every day – but what reasoning should be applied to what purpose by the working class to determine its own principled position.

How does it benefit the working class for half its membership to accept that their history of oppression and continuing disadvantage in multiple spheres of life – arising from their existence as the distinct female part of humanity – is to be erased by a group of men claiming a special oppression through claims to their membership?  How are men and women to unite to rid themselves of the sexual oppression that exists if ‘for some purposes’ this sexual division doesn’t exist, ceasing to exist by the simple declaration of men?  There is no liberation to be found in men colonising the existence of women.

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