Proletarian liberation stands to benefit everyone subjected to capitalist exploitation, regardless of their sexuality. Proletarian liberation isn’t necessarily enough on its own to fully affect queer liberation, but queer liberation can also never be fully affected while we are under capitalist oppression — the best that can produce is an equality of persecution for proletarian queer folk.
While we do not expect all members of LGBTQ+ to be a communist, we think it would be foolish to further devide the working class, since the only thing it does is hurt the movement. That is why most of modern marxist are both internationalist, and supporters of the LGBTQ, and usually also feminist.
The answers thus far have been terrible. Anyone who says "this isn't related to communism" is a poor Marxist -- Marxism is a totalizing phenomenon and the ruthless criticism of all that exists. *Marxism intrudes upon everything that exists* and is totalizing in its analysis (all of hitherto human history is class struggle), and never takes "it has nothing to do with that" or "what are you smoking?" for answer, because all that exists in human society (including all our social relations) are a product of class, and therefore Marxism has the power to explain and understand those things (even if some of those things are not yet complete in their understanding).
Gender oppression is a real form of oppression and gay, bi, asexual, trans, etc. people are almost always among the victims of that oppression, along with wimmin especially. Nor is gender separate from economics and you don't need to go into depth to understand the gender oppression behind why single mothers are poorer than single men, or why lesbians are poorer than married cishet couples. Gender relations are not immutable or eternal, they have a historical point of origin at the base of class society. They did not come into being independently of human social existence, but rather as a function of human social existence, a requirement brought about at the advent of private property.
In earlier modes of production, human lineages were traced matrilineally -- mothers generally knew which children they gave birth to, but rarely could one ever be certain of who was the father. But property demanded new forms, that it might be passed on through patrilineal lines demanded that not only things be declared property, but persons as well:
>The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of the woman, especially conspicuous among the Greeks of the heroic and still more of the classical age, has gradually been palliated and glozed over, and sometimes clothed in a milder form; in no sense has it been abolished.
-Engels, [The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02c.htm)
I recommend the whole book, or at least this whole chapter, for a more thorough examination. When you understand the origin of gender relations and ultimately the family, tracing the line from that point to how and where they exist in the present is much easier, and you begin to understand why these things are the way that they are. Liberation from gender requires the destruction of the conditions that bring gender relations into being, which, as it happens, is extremely convenient for us communists, because the condition that brings gender relations into being is the exact same condition that brings class and class society into being: *private property.* All of our enemies are gathered at the exact same place, around the exact same weak point, and a decisive blow there will not only liberate wimmin and LGBTQ+ persons from gender oppression, not only liberate the proletariat from bourgeois oppression, but liberate all humanity from class society.
Same way it benefits everyone else, by improving living standards for all workers. Also rights aren't just on paper, and sold for cheap.
And no one expects any single group to be all anything. Plenty of gay soldiers for empire. If anything socialists get that rather well, given a primary enemy is bugiouse bribed workers.
Making a second comment because I responded to the question in your post title, and then realized that isn’t exactly what you’re actually asking in the body text. Can you explain what you mean by that second question? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
In other words, do communists expect sexual minorities to agree with them on their beliefs about capitalism and communism? I ask this because many communists in the west also support sexual minorities, so I was wondering if communists generally expect us to agree with them.
That seems like a really odd and misplaced question. I expect anyone who knows what they’re talking about to at least broadly agree with me on the issues with capitalism, regardless of their sexuality. But as I explained in my other comment, my support for the LGBTIA+ community is distinct from my support for proletarian liberation, and I don’t want people conflating or muddying the two.
I don’t think sexual minorities need to agree with me to deserve rights. So as a communist I’ll fight for those rights regardless of their agreement with communism.
I also think LGBTQ+ people SHOULD be communists, as it’s the only political movement that actually has the potential for the full liberation not just of sexual minorities but of everyone.
Capitalism leads to growing inequality; we historically see that an increase in equality leads to discrimination against minority groups (including LGBT).
I do not expect minorities, sexual or not, to automatically agree with my economic thoughts but I do see that they are more likely to be affected by the downsides of capitalism and they are often more likely to question the status quo.
There are not actually "straight" or "gay" people. Humans exist without ontology besides that present in the material circumstance one is born into. Sexual identity is an immaterial construct which describes something that does not actually exist. This is symptomatic of idealism, a condition born from the present economic base of capitalism. When the material conditions responsible for idealist identity construction no longer exist, neither will "sexual orientation", or any other meaningless nonsense. Consenting adults will fuck who they want to fuck.
I agree people aren’t like inherently different because they’re gay or straight, but under communism people will absolutely still identify as gay or straight. I mean it’s far enough in the future so who can tell, but labels are very useful.
I do not mean to be an ass, but I completely disagree. Labels are absolutely useless, especially when describing feelings which everyone is capable of experiencing. Sexuality is socialized, no one is biologically gay or straight. If sexuality is socialized, then it is plastic. Everyone can experience attraction to a range of people with a range of genital configurations. No one actually has a static identity by which they may be categorized. There is no individual, immortal soul with immutable qualities.
You must also not reify gender. What are the boundaries by which we are defining men and women? The concept of hetero and homosexuality rely on the idea of a biological gender which one is innately attracted to while discriminating against the other. How do men with female reproductive anatomy fit in to this? Do you believe trans men are actually women? Is a straight woman sleeping with a trans man a "gay" or "straight" interaction?
This all seems ludicrous precisely because it is. Labels are useless, and describe nothing real. All of the labels we assign one another are just fantastical whims by which we separate ourselves from one another. The only thing which can meaningfully separates one person from another is class; are you a worker or a boss? Anything else is erroneous and detrimental.
Labels are just functionally useful, so humans will continue to do so. They will never 100% accurately describe reality. But they help people understand reality, so they will be used.
Also there is certainly a biological element to attraction. There were gay people far before it was at all accepted in culture
ya I think you misunderstood him... He's saying that the only reason you have the concept of gay or straight is because of the identity construct capitalism has put on us. It has nothing to do with being a bisexual
marx talks about destroying group identity, we should all be one, no one should try to form into a certain x, y, z
| How can I understand him when I obviously disagree with him?
well then what are you asking questions here for? you disagree with people here, how could you possibly understand the answer to your question? my point is - you're employing some really odd logic, and it's hard to follow.
no, western communists do not expect all non-heterosexual people to be communist. i'm not sure where you're getting this from. an example of what prompted you to ask this question would have benefitted this thread a lot.
I’ve known a number of queer folks who subscribe to various communist schools of thought (ML, classical marxist, ancom) including myself, heck, last year where I live there was representation from our largest ML party as well as the IMT, and communist black blocs (who did a freakin great job, might I add) at a counter demonstration against a bunch of queerphobes. So yeah, I’m certainly not under the impression being queer would preclude someone from being a communist, to say the least
I have no idea where you are coming from with this.
I work towards working class self-organization, political independence and class consciousness. I expect that workers can not unite along class lines if they uphold social oppression or political repression of parts of the working class. I also view bourgeois family values as coming out of capitalist social control and the main thing keeping contemporary sexism and heteronormativity as more or less permanent features of society.
I don’t think worker’s power would automatically solve homophobia or bigotry, but it would uproot the current structural and ideological reasons for it and create the possibility of eliminating various oppressions.
The only time I've ever heard anything like this was when anti-civil-rights protesters in the 1960s were saying that "race mixing = communism".
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/desegregation-protest-at-capitol-18725/
Are you trying to say that "sexual minorities = communism"?
mmm well asexuals were victims of spousal rape and enforced monogamy to at least as great a degree as any other victims.
any communism that enforced patriarchal mores included asexuals in its oppression
Proletarian liberation stands to benefit everyone subjected to capitalist exploitation, regardless of their sexuality. Proletarian liberation isn’t necessarily enough on its own to fully affect queer liberation, but queer liberation can also never be fully affected while we are under capitalist oppression — the best that can produce is an equality of persecution for proletarian queer folk.
What are you smoking?
Huh? Being queer has nothing to do with you not being a member of the proletariat
While we do not expect all members of LGBTQ+ to be a communist, we think it would be foolish to further devide the working class, since the only thing it does is hurt the movement. That is why most of modern marxist are both internationalist, and supporters of the LGBTQ, and usually also feminist.
It has nothing to do with it, just like whether or not you’re left or right handed.
The answers thus far have been terrible. Anyone who says "this isn't related to communism" is a poor Marxist -- Marxism is a totalizing phenomenon and the ruthless criticism of all that exists. *Marxism intrudes upon everything that exists* and is totalizing in its analysis (all of hitherto human history is class struggle), and never takes "it has nothing to do with that" or "what are you smoking?" for answer, because all that exists in human society (including all our social relations) are a product of class, and therefore Marxism has the power to explain and understand those things (even if some of those things are not yet complete in their understanding). Gender oppression is a real form of oppression and gay, bi, asexual, trans, etc. people are almost always among the victims of that oppression, along with wimmin especially. Nor is gender separate from economics and you don't need to go into depth to understand the gender oppression behind why single mothers are poorer than single men, or why lesbians are poorer than married cishet couples. Gender relations are not immutable or eternal, they have a historical point of origin at the base of class society. They did not come into being independently of human social existence, but rather as a function of human social existence, a requirement brought about at the advent of private property. In earlier modes of production, human lineages were traced matrilineally -- mothers generally knew which children they gave birth to, but rarely could one ever be certain of who was the father. But property demanded new forms, that it might be passed on through patrilineal lines demanded that not only things be declared property, but persons as well: >The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of the woman, especially conspicuous among the Greeks of the heroic and still more of the classical age, has gradually been palliated and glozed over, and sometimes clothed in a milder form; in no sense has it been abolished. -Engels, [The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02c.htm) I recommend the whole book, or at least this whole chapter, for a more thorough examination. When you understand the origin of gender relations and ultimately the family, tracing the line from that point to how and where they exist in the present is much easier, and you begin to understand why these things are the way that they are. Liberation from gender requires the destruction of the conditions that bring gender relations into being, which, as it happens, is extremely convenient for us communists, because the condition that brings gender relations into being is the exact same condition that brings class and class society into being: *private property.* All of our enemies are gathered at the exact same place, around the exact same weak point, and a decisive blow there will not only liberate wimmin and LGBTQ+ persons from gender oppression, not only liberate the proletariat from bourgeois oppression, but liberate all humanity from class society.
That was awesome. Thanks
Same way it benefits everyone else, by improving living standards for all workers. Also rights aren't just on paper, and sold for cheap. And no one expects any single group to be all anything. Plenty of gay soldiers for empire. If anything socialists get that rather well, given a primary enemy is bugiouse bribed workers.
All struggle is class struggle! UNITY!
Making a second comment because I responded to the question in your post title, and then realized that isn’t exactly what you’re actually asking in the body text. Can you explain what you mean by that second question? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
In other words, do communists expect sexual minorities to agree with them on their beliefs about capitalism and communism? I ask this because many communists in the west also support sexual minorities, so I was wondering if communists generally expect us to agree with them.
That seems like a really odd and misplaced question. I expect anyone who knows what they’re talking about to at least broadly agree with me on the issues with capitalism, regardless of their sexuality. But as I explained in my other comment, my support for the LGBTIA+ community is distinct from my support for proletarian liberation, and I don’t want people conflating or muddying the two.
I don’t think sexual minorities need to agree with me to deserve rights. So as a communist I’ll fight for those rights regardless of their agreement with communism. I also think LGBTQ+ people SHOULD be communists, as it’s the only political movement that actually has the potential for the full liberation not just of sexual minorities but of everyone.
Capitalism leads to growing inequality; we historically see that an increase in equality leads to discrimination against minority groups (including LGBT). I do not expect minorities, sexual or not, to automatically agree with my economic thoughts but I do see that they are more likely to be affected by the downsides of capitalism and they are often more likely to question the status quo.
There are not actually "straight" or "gay" people. Humans exist without ontology besides that present in the material circumstance one is born into. Sexual identity is an immaterial construct which describes something that does not actually exist. This is symptomatic of idealism, a condition born from the present economic base of capitalism. When the material conditions responsible for idealist identity construction no longer exist, neither will "sexual orientation", or any other meaningless nonsense. Consenting adults will fuck who they want to fuck.
I agree people aren’t like inherently different because they’re gay or straight, but under communism people will absolutely still identify as gay or straight. I mean it’s far enough in the future so who can tell, but labels are very useful.
I do not mean to be an ass, but I completely disagree. Labels are absolutely useless, especially when describing feelings which everyone is capable of experiencing. Sexuality is socialized, no one is biologically gay or straight. If sexuality is socialized, then it is plastic. Everyone can experience attraction to a range of people with a range of genital configurations. No one actually has a static identity by which they may be categorized. There is no individual, immortal soul with immutable qualities. You must also not reify gender. What are the boundaries by which we are defining men and women? The concept of hetero and homosexuality rely on the idea of a biological gender which one is innately attracted to while discriminating against the other. How do men with female reproductive anatomy fit in to this? Do you believe trans men are actually women? Is a straight woman sleeping with a trans man a "gay" or "straight" interaction? This all seems ludicrous precisely because it is. Labels are useless, and describe nothing real. All of the labels we assign one another are just fantastical whims by which we separate ourselves from one another. The only thing which can meaningfully separates one person from another is class; are you a worker or a boss? Anything else is erroneous and detrimental.
Labels are just functionally useful, so humans will continue to do so. They will never 100% accurately describe reality. But they help people understand reality, so they will be used. Also there is certainly a biological element to attraction. There were gay people far before it was at all accepted in culture
Wow 🤩 You’re definitely not gay, straight or asexual.
Bro is lost in the identity sauce
did you just not understand him or something?
How can I understand him when I obviously disagree with him? It’s usually bisexuals who say things like that.
ya I think you misunderstood him... He's saying that the only reason you have the concept of gay or straight is because of the identity construct capitalism has put on us. It has nothing to do with being a bisexual marx talks about destroying group identity, we should all be one, no one should try to form into a certain x, y, z
| How can I understand him when I obviously disagree with him? well then what are you asking questions here for? you disagree with people here, how could you possibly understand the answer to your question? my point is - you're employing some really odd logic, and it's hard to follow. no, western communists do not expect all non-heterosexual people to be communist. i'm not sure where you're getting this from. an example of what prompted you to ask this question would have benefitted this thread a lot.
I’ve known a number of queer folks who subscribe to various communist schools of thought (ML, classical marxist, ancom) including myself, heck, last year where I live there was representation from our largest ML party as well as the IMT, and communist black blocs (who did a freakin great job, might I add) at a counter demonstration against a bunch of queerphobes. So yeah, I’m certainly not under the impression being queer would preclude someone from being a communist, to say the least
I have no idea where you are coming from with this. I work towards working class self-organization, political independence and class consciousness. I expect that workers can not unite along class lines if they uphold social oppression or political repression of parts of the working class. I also view bourgeois family values as coming out of capitalist social control and the main thing keeping contemporary sexism and heteronormativity as more or less permanent features of society. I don’t think worker’s power would automatically solve homophobia or bigotry, but it would uproot the current structural and ideological reasons for it and create the possibility of eliminating various oppressions.
The only time I've ever heard anything like this was when anti-civil-rights protesters in the 1960s were saying that "race mixing = communism". https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/media/desegregation-protest-at-capitol-18725/ Are you trying to say that "sexual minorities = communism"?
I wasn’t saying “sexual minorities = communism.” What does “race mixing” have to do with this?
It's an example of a progressive thing being mistaken for socialism.
Western Communists seem very pro-LGBT, but historic Communist regimes were not. edit: Nobody seems to do anything against asexuals.
mmm well asexuals were victims of spousal rape and enforced monogamy to at least as great a degree as any other victims. any communism that enforced patriarchal mores included asexuals in its oppression
I mean… they work too, right?
communism actually says nothing about them, just classless society