Marxists and Gay liberation

[Irish Militant]

Prejudice against gay people, like racism and sexism, is one of the ways the capitalists use to divide working class people. If we can be turned against each other because of the colour of someone's skin or homosexuality then it makes us as a class that much weaker and less capable of fighting back against our common exploiters. Like discrimination against women, homophobia is linked to the capitalist system's use of the "traditional" or nuclear family as a key social support.
 
Marxists understand that the overthrow of capitalism and the end of class division in society would allow human beings to finally overcome these divisions once and for all, although even then getting rid of the remnants of racism, sexism and homophobia would take time.
 
However, socialists also understand that it isn't good enough to put off fighting for women's liberation or an end to racism until "after the revolution". Discrimination and division have to be fought in the here and now as well. It is vital that Marxists intervene into the movement for gay liberation with socialist ideas and a class analysis. We do not simply tail after such movements but instead point to the need to get rid of capitalism.
 
Unfortunately, socialists haven't always grasped that when it came to gay liberation. Gay activists in the socialist and workers movement have had to fight over the years for gay liberation to be put on the agenda. Across most of the socialist movement, including the Socialist Party it is these days considered
an essential part of socialist politics.
 
By necessity I've only touched on some very big issues in this post, so here are some links to some very useful writings on the issues raised:
 
Socialist Party Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Group:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/liberation/index.html
 
Socialist Party pamphlet "Liberation Generation":
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/liberation/lgbt.html
 
"Fighting for Women's Rights and Socialism", a pamphlet produced by Socialist Women gives an excellent insight into some related issues, in particular Section B which deals amongst other things with the nature of the family:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/socialistwomen/sw1.html

I have a question for supporters of the Woods group on this issue however. Why does your organisation refuse to raise the issue of gay liberation?

A search of the IDOM website and other Socialist Appeal publications reveals that while the Woods group has opinions on every subject under the sun, it has nothing at all to say about opposing homophobia and fighting for gay rights. Thousands of articles have been published yet there isn't a word on this issue. The closest I can find to serious comment is a quite appalling remark in an interview with Ted Grant which describes gay liberation (and women's liberation!) as "all the nonsense of the petty bourgeois":

http://www.marxist.com/the-theoretical-origins-of-the-degeneration-of-the-fourth---interview-with-ted-grant.htm

[Volkov]

Originally posted by Irish Militant


I have a question for supporters of the Woods group on this issue however. Why does your organisation refuse to raise the issue of gay liberation?

A search of the IDOM website and other Socialist Appeal publications reveals that while the Woods group has opinions on every subject under the sun, it has nothing at all to say about opposing homophobia and fighting for gay rights. Thousands of articles have been published yet there isn't a word on this issue. The closest I can find to serious comment is a quite appalling remark in an interview with Ted Grant which describes gay liberation (and women's liberation!) as "all the nonsense of the petty bourgeois":

http://www.marxist.com/the-theoretical-origins-of-the-degeneration-of-the-fourth---interview-with-ted-grant.htm

I feel that it is quite obvious that any progressive person has no problem with gay rights and such.  This issue is one of the "smaller" ones, it seems, and that we are concentrating on "bigger ones," such as eradicating poverty, etc.

As for Grant's comment, I believe that he is calling nonsense the petty-bourgeois notion of eliminating discrimination under the current capitalist world and doing nothing to eliminate the problems fo capitalism.  When socialism is here, I believe that a lot of the "smaller" issues, such as gay rights, women's liberation, etc. will be quickly resolved under socialism.  We are not against gay rights, womens' liberation etc.  In fact, didn't Lenin say something like "The proletariat cannot acheive complete freedom until it has won freedom for women." or something like that?  I seriously doubt that you will find anyone in the WIL or any other organization affiliated with the CMI opposed to liberating women, homosexuals, etc.

[mir]

I believe that socialists take a stance for the liberation of all workers and peasants, not just women workers, or minority workers, or gay workers, but all.  Although we should proclaim our support for an end to discrimination and prejudice, we should NOT concentrate on getting the support of just a segment of society but on all of society (excluding the bourgeoisie, of course).  The gay question seems to me too decadent because the sexual orientation of a person should be something private but today you have gays proclaiming their sexuality openly.  The "don't ask, don't tell" policy, I would say, is best.  You can discriminate against women and against minorities because they cannot hide their appearance, however you cannot discriminate against a gay person unless they show you that they are gay.  Gays should try to stop focusing on themselves as a seperate segment of society, but join the fight for true equality and socialism, not against petty bourgeois discrimination.

Also I am against gay marriage because a woman and a woman cannot have children and a man and a man cannot either, therefore institutionalizing their union is unnatural from the point of view of science.  However, I do support them getting similar benefits that married couples receive.  Also, I think sex changes must be banned and transexuals and that type of nonsense should be made illegal.

[Irish Militant]

Originally by Volkov I feel it quite obvious that any progressive person has no problem with gay rights and such.

A little later...

Originally posted by mir
The gay question seems to me too decadent because the sexual orientation of a person should be something private but today you have gays proclaiming their sexuality openly.  The "don't ask, don't tell" policy, I would say, is best... I am against gay marriage because a woman and a woman cannot have children and a man and a man cannot either, therefore institutionalizing their union is unnatural from the point of view of science...  Also, I think sex changes must be banned and transexuals and that type of nonsense should be made illegal.

Well that little bit of complacency rather blew up in your face didn't it Volkov?

[marx_was_right]

You cannot blame one person for the personal opinion of another.

[Irish Militant]

Originally posted by Volkov
This issue is one of the "smaller" ones, it seems, and that we are concentrating on "bigger ones," such as eradicating poverty, etc.

Socialist Appeal/Woods group manages to produce thousands of words about the "pedagogics of Vygotsky", pamphlet length articles marking 400 years since the publication of Don Quixote, enormous pieces about the "revolutionary essence of Fela Kuti's music", a five part series on British poetry and the French revolution and endless reports of Alan Woods speaking to small meetings. Nothing wrong with any of that, excepting perhaps what appears to be a rather dubious worship of your leader and the occasionally ponderous and grandiose tone. But you can hardly expect anyone to believe, in this context, that an inability to come up with a single thing to say about gay liberation except for one crass remark is due to pressing priorities elsewhere! Or are you seriously telling us that the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote is a more pressing concern for socialists than the oppression of gay people?

There are thousands and thousands of articles on the IDOM and related sites. They give your views on every conceivable subject, from the important to the utterly trivial. With one very obvious exception.

As I said in my first post, this is not an issue which has always been grasped by the socialist and workers movements. It has taken time, and struggle by gay socialists, for socialist organisations to come to an understanding of gay liberation and its part in the struggle for socialism. Not all that long ago it was commonplace for socialists to completely ignore the issue or even to hold actively homophobic views, including the idea that homosexuality was a capitalist degeneracy and would disappear under socialism. Those views have mostly disappeared from our movement. Only the Woods group seems determined to continue the backward attitudes of the past by simply pretending that homosexuality and homophobia do not exist. What are the views of other supporters of the Woods group/Socialist Appeal on this?

[Irish Militant]

Originally posted by igor
You cannot blame one person for the personal opinion of another.

I wasn't blaming anyone for the views of another person. I was pointing out that Volkov's complacent attitude that no progressive person could have a problem with gay rights was rather comprehensively disproved by the next posting.

Is Mir a supporter of the Woods group?

[marx_was_right]

Mir will have to answer that himself, but whether or not he is a member of any particular group does not exclude him from having personal opinions that might differ from that group.

[OUTOFTHENIGHT]

'However, socialists also understand that it isn't good enough to put off fighting for women's liberation or an end to racism until "after the revolution". Discrimination and division have to be fought in the here and now as well. It is vital that Marxists intervene into the movement for gay liberation with socialist ideas and a class analysis. We do not simply tail after such movements but instead point to the need to get rid of capitalism. '

I would agree with that and I think the majority of socialists would as well.

[Irish Militant]

I would agree with that and I think the majority of socialists would as well.

I am glad to hear it Outofthenight.

I still find it astonishing and appalling that the Woods group has nothing at all to say on this issue. It isn't as if IDOM/Socialist Appeal etc are short of words on every other conceivable subject!

Does anyone want to offer a better explanation than Volkov's one - that your organisation is too busy concentrating on the really big issues like the pedagogics of Vygotsky and British poets views of the French revolution?

We will soon be heading towards a hundred views of this thread and yet there is still a strange silence from the many supporters of the Woods group on this site about this. Is it that embarrassment has robbed you all of the ability to type?

[redprophet]

I would like to reiterate what Volkov said: the majority of people in CMI support gay rights, despite the lack of material.  I agree that more material should be produced on the subject.  

Here is a quote from an article about Sergei Einstein: “Eisenstein went for a long period to the US and then to Mexico. When he came back to Russia in 1932 he found the political climate had changed completely. Many of his friends and collaborators had been purged and even the 1932 edition of the Soviet Encyclopaedia denounced him as a “petty bourgeois”. Eisenstein had always been openly gay. However, with the general suppression of democracy under Stalin, homosexuals, who previously had won rights through the revolution that they had not had in any other country, were also repressed and attacked. Eisenstein was thus forced to marry his assistant Pera Attasheva in 1934, to avoid repression.”

From an article concerning the greek orthodox church: “Other priests have been involved in homosexuality. This in itself is not a surprise, and to any progressive minded person is not a problem, but the point is that the Church hierarchy condemns homosexuality as “an abomination.”

Please stop throwing around accusations of leader worship, homophobia and other ridiculous things.  We are interested in hearing reports of the activities of the international.  Wanting to know what are leaders are doing is not leader worship.  I cannot answer for Alan Woods as to why he has not produced a substantial work on gay rights.  It does not necessarily lead to the conclusion you have reached.

[Irish Militant]

It is not enough for a political organisation to say that "the majority" of its members support gay rights themselves. Quite apart from the fact that it implies a minority do not, it abdicates the central responsibility of a Marxist organisation - to offer political leadership.

There is not one single article dealing with gay liberation or the attitude of Marxists towards homophobia, or the position of gay people in capitalist society, or how Marxists should intervene into movements for gay rights. There is not one word of a socialist programme on this issue. Yet your sites have thousands of articles on every conceivable other subject, from the important to the utterly trivial. The question you need to be asking is why is this the case?

Is it because your organisation is actively homophobic? I doubt it. Much more likely is that the issue is simply not regarded as significant, a view which is itself incredibly backwards for would-be "Marxists" in 2005. Volkov talked about priorities in his post on this thread and it is quite clear where the priorities of your tendency lie - the views of British poets on the French Revolution need a five part series of lengthy articles, the struggle for gay liberation gets a solitary sneering remark.

The question is not why Alan Woods hasn't produced a major work on gay rights, the question is why has your entire tendency produced nothing at all about the issue? Although I do find it slightly amusing that your immediate response was to look at the question in the light of the personal activity of Woods - another minor indication of what appears to me to be a rather unhealthy view of your leaders. Birthday messages, constant reports of them speaking to two dozen people in a room somewhere in Austria, fawning descriptions of them including calling Ted the foremost figure in world Trotskyism for 60 years and so on do not appear to me to be an appropriate way for Marxists to deal with their leaders. Still, I am more than willing to leave this issue to another thread. I don't want to distract any of you from the central issue of this thread.

[redprophet]

The primary issues we deal with are not views of British poets on the French Revolution or the pendantics of Vygotsky.  You simply found the most obscure articles on the website and decided to portray them as central issues in our ideology.  

The only reason I said "a majority" was because I am not qualified to speak for every member of the organization.  Let me just say that I personally have yet to meet a homophobic member of CMI.

You are probably correct that the leaders consider it an unimportant issue.  The reason I mentioned Alan Woods was because you are constantly refering to our organization as "the woods group."  

We respect our leaders for the work they've done.  But it is their ideas that lead us to respect them, not some sort of godlike persona.  We do not have a pantheon of saints that we worship.

[Irish Militant]

Originally posted by redprophet
The primary issues we deal with are not views of British poets on the French Revolution or the pendantics of Vygotsky.  You simply found the most obscure articles on the website and decided to portray them as central issues in our ideology.

You miss my point comrade. I am not saying that your primary focus is on British poets views of the French revolution. I am using that as one of many examples of the quite laudable range of subjects which your publications cover. You can find the time and inclination to produce a five part series of lengthy pieces on that subject or thousands of words on a vast range of equally obscure matters but you cannot find the time or inclination to say anything at all about gay liberation.

Volkov was to date the only supporter of your tendency to make a stab at explaining why you have nothing to say on this matter. He argued in essence that it was a small issue and that your organisation preferred to focus on the "big issues" like eradicating poverty. I mentioned some of the many incredibly obscure issues which your publications have dealt with in great detail to illustrate the inadequacy and inaccuracy of that as an explanation.

Originally posted by redprophet
You are probably correct that the leaders consider it an unimportant issue.

Well this at least is honest, which I appreciate. But tell me, do you think it's an unimportant issue? Do you think it appropriate that your organisation has nothing to say on the matter? Do you agree with your leaders in other words, and if not what are you going to do about it?

As a final aside, I refer to your organisation as the Wood group for two reasons. In the first place it is a humourous reference to what I regard as the unhealthy attitude to your leading figures which your publications show, but more of this on another thread. Secondly, as far as I am aware your group doesn't normally use any particular name externally and I know that in our entryist days the CWI wouldn't have appreciated other socialists writing about us under that name.

[mir]

we should proclaim our support for an end to discrimination and prejudice

Obviously I do not have a problem with gay rights, but I do have a problem with supporting only a segment of workers as opposed to supporting ALL workers.  I believe socialists should concentrate more on taking over the means of production instead advocating liberal causes.  Look at the civil rights movement in America.  African-Americans have the right to sit where they want on a bus or eat at a restaurant, but they are still subjected to police brutality, discrimination in the workplace, and all types of other mistreatment.  True equality and an end to discrimination will be achieve ONLY with socialist revolution, not bourgeois laws.

Ted Grant which describes gay liberation (and women's liberation!) as "all the nonsense of the petty bourgeois"

This is because he has enough sense to realize that feminists and gay rights people only want meaningless laws to cover up discrimination in society, not worker's rights.  And with that said, it's plain to see that I support Woods/Grant.