Reproduced from The Red Flag (Switzerland): A Response to the Very Silly Article from Germany Published by CI-IC
The comrades of The Red Flag in Switzerland have published, from an anonymous reader of that publication, a response to the very foolhardy, reactionary, and fallacious article by a German group which was published by Communist International, otherwise known as CI-IC. I reproduce it here because I felt I ought to reply to this article, as it is probably the worst example yet of transphobia and fundamentally reactionary (more specifically mechanistic, unscientifically reductivist and essentialist, and troublingly reminiscent of reactionary “radical feminism”) ideas about gender being allowed into the ICM under the guise of opposition to postmodernism, but before I had even begun composing a response this comrade came forward with an excellent one and thus I wish to share and amplify theirs, rather than wasting time reiterating their same points in my own words.
I do not agree with everything this comrade says. But the points of disagreement are minor; I fundamentally think this comrade is quite right that the emergence of this ham-fisted and backward piece from Germany has further validated the charges the Swiss comrades of The Red Flag and the CPS(RF) have made against reactionary elements in the communist movement in Germany: specifically charges of revisionism, reactionary attitudes of the same kind expressed in the article, and “greater German” chauvinism in the KRF. These charges have been controversial and many outside Switzerland and Germany seem to regard them as contrived; all I will say is that if all the direct quotations produced here and in other writings are contrived than they are very convincingly so, and even so the Germans have in writing the offending article somewhat incriminated themselves. In other words, I am inclined to believe the accusations, and to agree in most respects with the comrade who wrote this response. We can only continue to emphasize that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the ideology of liberation for all proletarians, including queers, that the notion that transgenderism is at odds with materialism is idiotic and arises from a vulgar misunderstanding of both gender and materialism (I have written on this before), and that Marxism must be always progressive and never reactionary or dogmatic if it is to remain Marxism. And, for those who find the unfortunate spate of foolish articles like the Germans’ disheartening, we must also remember that it is by struggling democratically and dynamically within the ICM that all wrongful lines will be corrected and the blade of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with the universal ideas of Gonzalo Thought will be sharpened into the weapon to strike the killing blow against global capital and all its oppressive bourgeois institutions, including those which oppress queers, those which oppress women, those which oppress national minorities, etc.
All of the following is reproduced without alteration from The Red Flag. It is not my writing.
RASSENSTANDPUNKT: THE IDEOLOGICAL DECAY OF DOGMATISM
A lot of on-the-ground work for communism is all about dispelling rumours, held prejudices in the heads of people about marxism. The neighbourhood where I do most of my political and mass work in generally has the benefit of this not being an issue — the school here is much too underfunded, leading to young people being mostly devoid of anti-communist propaganda. With people who grew up earlier, during the «cold war», it is often different. But as long as they are not reactionaries, they will recognize that as socialist revolutionaries, what we fight for is progressive (whether they support this is a different question of course). That‘s the beauty of communism — as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (its founders) said:
«The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.»
Communism is not just a form of society that we fight for — a society without classes, patriarchy or State, where everyone gives according to their abilities and gets what they need — it is also the theory and practice of the proletariat (that is, theworking class) conquering the world and achieving that new, communist world, informed by centuries of struggles and theoreticians like Marx, Lenin and Mao (to just name the most important). And that theory has nothing to do with the dogmatic, reactionary, backward shit this society tries to force feed us on a day to day basis — at least not for people who are serious about it.
But not everyone is serious about communism, not everyone is honest about breaking with not just exploitation, but with old ideas too. As my title suggests, I want to write some words about something that may be a fringe topic, the topic of queer-antagonism (hating people who deviate from this society‘s gender roles, such as gay or trans people).
«Rassenstandpunkt: The Ideological Decay of Dogmatism» is a reference to an article posted on an internet blog called «ci-ic.org» called «The Ideological Decay of Imperialism». This «article» is written by a German magazine which mislabels itself communists and even maoist that calls itself «Klassenstandpunkt» (meaning Class Position). «Klassenstandpunkt» (or as I call it here, «Rassenstandpunkt», Race Position) is nothing but a mouthpiece for the political line of a transphobic, racist and Greater-German nationalist sect in Germany — the so-called «Committee Red Flag».
In this article — which was originally published a couple of days ago and then quickly taken down, only to be reposted today — we can read the following paragraph:
«Today with identity politics, a woman is defined by whether she moves, dresses and makes up like a woman. A transsexual man who claims to be a woman is celebrated as a woman because he is ‹feminine› and moves, dresses and makes up like a woman. This has negated the whole struggle for women‘s liberation of the last decades, thus plays a backwarded role in the women‘s movement.»1
One thing‘s for certain: this is the opposite of rupturing with all traditional ideas. Additionally, this is of course in blatant opposition to the marxist position on the women‘s and queer questions — that is, proletarian feminism. The work, „Marxism, Mariátegui and the Women‘s Movement“, that was co-authored by Comrade Norah and Chairman Gonzalo (two of Peru‘s most important communists of all time) we can read the actual understanding of what man and woman is:
«For marxism, women, as much as men, are but a set of social relations, historically adapted and changing as a function of the changes of society in its development process. Woman then is a social product, and her transformation demands the transformation of society.»2
But these people‘s argument not only blatantly contradicts marxism — it also, as a result, is ahistorical and abstract. The article from the «Committee Red Flag» revisionists (a revisionist is a false communist that negates the principles of marxism, in short, an opportunist disguised as a marxist) insinuates that transgenderness is a product of the generalized counter-revolutionary offensive, which began in the late 1970s and which has intensified since the collapse of the Russian-East German bloc (that was socialist in name but imperialist in deeds) in 1989–91.
If you‘re now thinking: «Hey, wait a minute, haven‘t trans people existed before the 1970s?», then you would of course be right — transgender people in particular and queer people in general have existed across all modes of production and in all sorts of different nations and peoples since the dawn of humanity, as the document «Marxism and Queer Emancipation» by Red Star — Switzerland proves much better than I ever could.3
While it may seem that ci-ic.org let the cat out of the bag regarding the queer-antagonism of the «Committee Red Flag», that is not actually the case. Revolutionaries in Switzerland have time and time again exposed the outright genocidal views of these revisionists on the queer question, in various documents published since the summer of 2021. In «Down with the Politics of Social-Imperialism! Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!», a polemic originally written with the intention of the Swiss communists constructively critcizing and extending a hand to the „Committee Red Flag“ chauvinists (which I personally, at least with hindsight, think they didn‘t deserve in the first place), we can read the following characterization:
«And finally, there is the point of queer-antagonism, in particular trans-antagonism, which was expressed to an extreme degree against our leadership and other comrades in our organization. We understand that the queer question is a new problem, left unsolved by marxism until this point, and that the views of the Committee Red Flag on this question are also shared by others in the international communist movement. For this reason, we have elaborated our position on this question in a separate document, which is distributed alongside this criticism. In this criticism, we will thus focus not on the general analysis and synthesis of the queer question on the basis of Gonzalo thought, but instead the specific ways in which this kind of patriarchal chauvinism was applied by the German comrades in their abroad work in Switzerland.
What are the positions of the Committee Red Flag on the queer question? Since there is no public document on this question by the German comrades, we will summarize our understanding of the positions of the Committee Red Flag in a few points:
1) The existence of LGBT+ people is viewed as a product of patriarchal oppression within class society, in particular imperialist society. LGBT+ people are viewed as individuals who choose to live in a certain way, because they could not bear the responsibilities that come with fulfilling a certain role in patriarchy. In this way, LGBT+ people are degenerated elements, made to degenerate by patriarchy, and being LGBT+ is alien to the proletariat.
2) It is a democratic right to be LGBT+, but communists are not allowed to, since they must be the vanguard of the proletariat, and the class is not LGBT+. In this way, being LGBT+ is viewed as similar to being religious.
3) Since LGBT+ people are alien or degenerated elements to the class, the class and the masses do not like or respect them. Therefore, those comrades who have responsibility cannot be allowed to be LGBT+, since the masses will not follow them.
4) Transgender people have capitulated in front of combatting patriarchy and instead chosen ‹the easy way out›, an individualist solution, so as to not be oppressed by patriarchy or having to oppress others within patriarchy. However, they cannot change their biological sex, and as such, they end up ruining their bodies and become degenerated elements alien to the class.
5) Marriage before the Party or the new State is between one man and one woman, since that is the proletarian conception of romantic relationships. LGBT+ relationships are cultural degeneracies alien to the proletariat.
6) There is no special ‹queer oppression› within patriarchy, only the exploitation and oppression of women and the pressure on men to oppress women.
This position was expressed towards our comrades in many different ways, and principally towards a trans female comrade. She was told that she couldn‘t lead, since the masses would not respect her; she was told she was an individualist, because she would not sleep and shower with the male comrades at a summer camp; internally, male names were used for her and another trans female comrade behind both of the comrades‘ backs; a remark was made that she was ‹ruining her body› by taking estrogen; a remark was made that her relationship was ‹just gay with extra steps›; she was consistently referred to as male by the German comrades; etc. etc. Another trans female comrade experienced a similar attitude from the German comrades, for example being criticized for doing a toast to proletarian feminism at a comradeship or told not to shout slogans at a 25th of November demonstration in Hamburg.
[…]
Regarding the attitude of the Committee Red Flag towards queer comrades, we can see that it springs from these erroneous positions. But these positions do not correspond to the ideology of the proletariat and they do not correspond to the actual views of the masses. They only serve to tail the most backward sections, and for this reason, the class character is lumpen.“4
This is not all, however. Swiss revolutionaries have since then revealed more information about the reactionary positions of the „Committee Red Flag“ revisionists, such as the following:
„Here, it should also be noted that the position of at least one member of the Committee Red Flag (who used to be their international responsible) is to compare trans people to objects: ‹[Thinking you can change your gender] is metaphysics. Look at this cup. Can it turn into a stone?›, as well as outright genocidal views: ‹It [being transgender] is so degenerated. In Brazil,you would and will have to spend a couple of years in a labor camp for this.› Their ‹assistant responsible› for the abroad work in Switzerland said: ‹It [being transgender] is not even a question in Peru. They get stoned to death.› Of course implying that people‘s war requires murdering queers and that this should be the Committee Red Flag‘s position on the question.»5
Until now, this information has generally not been taken seriously by people (especially so called «internet communists», some of them even being queer themselves) who still have an unfounded faith in the «Committee Red Flag» (due to never having met them, and only having seen their posts on the internet) and their «new unified international organization» they have been building up (I have to admit that I don‘t really see how an «international organization» or «conference» can be «unified», if it excludes Communist Parties actually waging revolutionary wars in India and in the Philippines today, as well as Parties concretely preparing them, such as the Communist Party of Burma and the Maoist Communist Party of Turkey/Nothern Kurdistan, but that‘s a different topic for another day).
It is my hope that with this ugly performance of self-exposure by these dogmato-revisionists — who are merely putting a new «communist» price tag on the long expired and rotting reactionary ideas of old — wavering colleagues and friends across the world revolutionary movement will now find themselves forced to pick the correct side in this important struggle between two lines — the red, working-class line and the white, capitalist one.
As for idiots now claiming that this article must somehow be an expression of «the line of the international communist movement», as ci-ic.org published it (please don‘t laugh!) I would like to respond only with a quotation from the Communist Party of China:
«Concerning the preparation and convening of an international meeting and its composition, we have repeatedly said that it is necessary to achieve unanimity of views through consultation among all the fraternal Parties, including the old ones and those rebuilt or newly founded. Otherwise, no matter what drafting committee or international meeting you convene, it will be illegal.»6
There is an old joke between communists and socialist revolutionaries that revisionist figures such as Dühring or Kautsky are today only remembered because Marx, Engels and Lenin completely demolished them. The reason this joke is funny is because it‘s true. The same will be the case with these mistaken ideas and the sectarian clowns representing them — their traditional, backwards ideas are no exception to the rule, they will be ruptured with, and both queer-antagonism and the «Committee Red Flag» will only be remembered as footnotes, as things that were overcome, as negative examples.
FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM AND AGAINST REVISIONISM!
1https://web.archive.org/web/20220114051809/https://ci-ic.org/blog/2022/01/13/klassenstandpunkt-the-ideological-decay-of-imperialism/
2Comrade Norah and Chairman Gonzalo: «Marxism, Mariátegui and the Women‘s Movement» (April 1975)
3See Red Star — Switzerland: «Marxism and Queer Emancipation» (December 2020).
4Red Star — Switzerland: «Down with the Politics of Social-Imperialism! Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!» (December 2020)
5Footnote to Editorial Board of The Red Flag: «Two Important Documents by Comrade Alfred Klahr on the National Question in the German-Speaking Countries» (15.08.2021)
6Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (30.08.1964)
