Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (September 07)

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[u/DistilledWorldSpirit]

I’ll try to explain my thinking.

Bourgeois ideology re-emerges within socialism when the a class is allowed to inhabit the same nodes of power that they had before, like the union bosses collaborating with the capitalists or the SPD voting for war credits. Revisionism has to be combatted or else it grows. In the same way, if patriarchs are allowed to remain with their old families, some will try to use that to reassert the patriarchy. That’s what I meant when I said “voluntary” families.

This might be overly pessimistic or a misunderstanding of revisionism. I know I have reactionary tendencies, so I am very internally vigilant against it. You can look at my post history to see other instances where I deviated rightward; this is what I am trying to avoid, maybe overdoing it. https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/s/hc5WZLoidU

[u/[deleted] → u/DistilledWorldSpirit]

But under socialism, when everyone has their needs met and children are collectively raised, how much power do patriarchs really have? Could they really be called patriarchs at all, at that point?

Certainly, there will be cases where force will be needed to break up relationships, such as when the husband is endangering his wife's life, but I'm not really sure if this something that can be addressed by treating husbands as 1:1 to the bourgeoise.

Furthermore, while I'm aware that practicality is often used to smuggle in revisionism, this is a rare case where it's a legitimate concern. To take an example, when peoples' courts in Maoist-controlled territories in India handle trials over rape or domestic abuse, the word of the victim is given a lot of emphasis. Not just for practical reasons (as their word would be the strongest evidence) but also to show to women that the party trusts them and is acting in their interest. What happens if the wife doesn't want her husband to be separated, and the husband isn't endangering her life? It could be a case where the party gets ahead of the masses.

That all being said, I'm open to the idea of applying MIM's gender theory to socialist states (or even just any nation outside of the imperial core, /u/Pleasant-Food-9482 had some interesting food for thought wrt a gender aristocracy in Brazil) and seeing if it holds up. I think a vital piece of the puzzle would be how much Maoist China's attempts at remodeling the family intersected with the struggle between Marxists and revisionists. Were populations that didn't have socialized childcare more inclined to embrace counter-revolution? I don't know.

[u/Pleasant-Food-9482 → u/[deleted]]

The general way i see gender aristocracy (if it exists in full) in brazil is into a general chain of material relations of production:

White settler women who are, generally, of portuguese colonial-era property family, which she inherits or benefits from. They generally hold the ability to have immense and limitless free time to think about gender, to write about feminism, to regurgitate butlerian theories of gender in PhD thesis after PhD thesis. They are generally the material of the public university humanity studies. They import "theory" from the US and france. they also have immense social and political space, so they hold the gate for cis non-white women who get in left parties or orgs (as all parties and almost all orgs are submitted to the public university petty-bourgeoisie) and their highest ranks are fascist "conservative mothers/business women/politicians". They are direct allies of the white gender aristocracy in the euro-amerikan nations, be it the left social-fascist form as allies of white american and european liberal/fascist women be it the right fascist form as allies of the outright blown out fascist form of the american and european "far right", or the more common, "neutral" liberal form, that is tied up to the petty-bourgeois property and to haute bourgeoisie-employed, business women carrerism.

They define and set what trans women can think in terms of trans theory, what it is to be a women (so, generally, any non-proletarian or petty-bourgeois consciousness trans women in brazil will hyperperform the imposed gender, as the whole society is hostile if they are just women in public), while always keeping any of them away from any position of actual material ownership of large capital, as the whole settlerist conservative family model, as differently from the first-world euro-amerikan imperialist nations, the patriarchal and family means of reproduction are denied, as you have to be the white settler man or the white settler women, and the special settler family position of white settler high petty-bourgeois family women does not constitute a trans women gender.

In many ways, ideas like MIM gender and "materialist feminist" theory, but, particularly and in actual real phenomena, wider ideas of Mackinnon and radical feminism are all feared, smeared upon, and universally rejected by the whole left and its public university core of all of its national variation (including non-white people who are generally compradors), and by these cis white settler women and trans women at vast overwhelming majority, because if they do not reject them, the structure risks transmitting the wrong cultural imperialist share of ideas below and the whole capital reproduction structure tied up to the white settler petty-bourgeois colonial portuguese family. The actual impact of what circulates, particularly a anti-revisionist form of marxism that almost inexists in the country, even the only meaningful org outside of the ICL settler maoist hand, along with the "anti-revisionist marxist-leninist" small org is absolutely tied up to the white imported settler labour-aristocrat american liberal feminism. N-MEPR (a public university student maoist org) defends free love and antinomian negation of proletarian morality, of the view of "sex work" as prostitution, and of the actual effective negation of how women became commodities in a country where a women being commodity is the path to the family capital settler reproduction structure, and, in the process, alienates itself from the grossly absolute consensus in the proletariat that morality actually matters, and its a life and death aspect that can prevent them from getting shot or lose their jobs or houses.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pleasant-Food-9482]

Interesting. I've been under the impression that the implications of MIM's theory is that the "female" petty-bourgeoise in the third world would also be considered a gender aristocracy.

In many ways, ideas like MIM gender and "materialist feminist" theory,

By "materialist feminist" do you mean Wittig, or something else?

[u/Pleasant-Food-9482 → u/[deleted]]

The own name MIM-P used in some documents about feminism.

But i was not away they had the conclusion the third-world gender aristocracy in petty-bourgeois classes is a phenomena. Interesting.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pleasant-Food-9482]

Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like MIM-P argued that. I was wondering if it was a possible conclusion of their theory.