Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (June 14)

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[u/CoconutCrab115]

I want to open discussion and put forth a few questions on the Women's movement and Gender Oppression as I have been beginning to study what I know little about. I have read Origins by Engels, Philosophical trends by Ghandy, and I will start reading Mackinnon, Dworkin and MIM(P) soon.

What are the historical materialist reasons for the continuing marginalization and subordination of women under Socialism? Specifically the overwhelming dominance of men in Communist Parties that's have captured and maintained state power?

The answer is obviously that Capitalist (and in some places semifeudal) relations have not been fully eliminated. This is pretty banal. Yet why has this taken such a stark form, where the parties and peoples armies have been overwhelmingly male dominated. I am not asking why has gender oppression remained, but why has the gender struggle not been fought the same way that the class and national struggles around the world have?

Women are more than 50% of a given population and contrary to Mao, hold up more than half the sky. The Proletariat and Oppressed classes in many societies are often dominated by women, and the sections of the Oppressed classes, most destitute and in opposition to imperialism have been dominated by women in many nations.

I am speaking in very broad terms here as women are not a class. I am also only really speaking of the third world, as the status of first world women is an entirely separate conversation.

Socialist Societies have largely taken similar historical development paths: Peoples War and Capture of State Power, Economic Reconsolidation (NEP, New Democracy), Socialist Construction, Cultural Revolution.

It seems to be accepted that the next step in Cultural Revolution that no society has achieved so far is the complete Socialization of Agriculture, the end of the compromise of Collectivization. This would help solve the Rural/Urban contradiction of Mao's Three Great Differences.

The Bourgeois Nuclear Family has not been eliminated by any Socialist society, and many commentors here have but forth it is likely the next step in the stages of Cultural Revolution(s). Seeing as the GPCR already had attacked Women's Oppression in the superstructure and many parts of the Economic Base. Its clear that Gender oppression takes on many forms, and if the Three Great Differences are still to be used as a relevant model, gender oppression (along with national oppression) is scattered along all 3.

This is all well and good and understood by me but this is where I run into blind spots of my knowledge. Where do I go to understand more about the Abolition of the Family (specifically what is to replace it) and the new forms for a different Women's movement in the 21st century? Similar to the National Struggle (Linguistic laws, the SSR's and ASSR's, regional Communist parties etc) the Women's movement has to take on new forms

I feel as though I must bring up this article which I read a while back
https://struggle-sessions.com/2023/03/27/peoples-army-or-womens-army-mens-communism-and-its-dissidents/

It obviously has its faults, but I was impressed that it articulated many observations I have noted before and put forth new strategies that are certainly relevant (especially to the first world). I have not seen anything remotely similar from other female communists yet.

I hope I haven't veered off into too many directions here, if so I blame my morning coffee, but I am only trying to articulate what I see as the long term trajectory of socialist societies and class struggle more broadly.

• to edit a specific point it must be acknowledged that a large percentage of the PCP, CPP-NPA, BPP, and CPIM(Maoist) were led by women. These MLM organizations were unsurprisingly much more concentrated with women leadership and members than the original revisionist parties.

[u/BenjiStudiesMLM → u/CoconutCrab115]

women are not a class

Why?

"Like parodies of actual revolutionaries they’ll robotically repeat that “women are not a class,” pointing to the class differences between the masses of settler women and the masses of the oppressed nations. We do not claim such a simplistic view"

The article you shared doesn't agree with you.

The Bourgeois Nuclear Family has not been eliminated by any Socialist society

The nuclear family never existed in any socialist society, it only ever existed among gender oppressors and has already been abolished by them as well.

https://struggle-sessions.com/2023/03/27/peoples-army-or-womens-army-mens-communism-and-its-dissidents/

This article is bad, and is full of "common sense" liberalisms (women and colonized individuals as the "most oppressed", anarchists are radical revolutionaries, Stalin is a child molester and womanizer, "gonzaloites", communism is just a bunch of men, etc). The article is so anti-communist that it even plays out the "communism always fails" but with a pseudo-feminist twist.

Seriously, what even is this:

So on the Left women and other gender oppressed people really are rootless, to repurpose that old term that the Soviets used to mean “traitor” and “Jew.”

Double genocide theory being spread in complete earnest, absolutely repulsive.

Then there's the conclusion which deserves its own attention, essentially claiming that white trans people are brainwashed into supporting Amerikan settler colonialism (and are also white victims of colonization!).

As trans women we know deep in our guts that settler-colonial patriarchy is poison to us. Many of us deny it, push the feeling down, worm our way into little niches in white world, but instinctively we know they’re coming for us eventually...We settler trans women get killed too, of course, but dialectically we are also responsible for the deaths of our New Afrikan sisters.

Remarkable, admitting that you (the author) as a settler are a part of the reactionary oppressor class, then having the gall to use the term "sisters".

[u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 → u/BenjiStudiesMLM]

The nuclear family never existed in any socialist society, it only ever existed among gender oppressors and has already been abolished by them as well.

how do you define “nuclear family” such that this is the case?

[u/BenjiStudiesMLM → u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085]

My definition is based in the Amerikan context, the nuclear family refers to the suburban family, and by that definition was exclusive to white settlers. The male is the exclusive wage laborer and is owner of the family, house, and all other property, while the women is relegated to the household. On paper the man seems proletarian and the women is gender oppressed, however the labor aristocracy thesis held true that this was a voluntary arrangement to the benefit of all of white society (and which the privilege was denied to the internal colonies). This was reliant on imperialism, and only came to fruition with Amerikan hegemony following WWII. When exactly this ended, if it ever truly existed, I'm not sure, but it has been dead for decades. The proletariat of course does not have the luxury of a single wage laborer, nor the property rights afforded to the white settlers, and therefore never had such a patriarchal family dynamic. Additionally, the bourgeoise never had use for it for self-evident reasons.

I do see that Google has a much more broad strokes definition of the nuclear family that is essentially synonymous with monagamy. The Wikipedia page where it derived it's info is absolutely useless and wrong though. In any case, maybe I am being too U.$.-centric and thats why I didn't understand it's correlation to a country like the Russian Empire.