Tag: social classes

A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work” (2020)

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The question of women’s liberation is central to any revolutionary project, and thus so is the question of “sex work.” Esperanza Fonseca’s contribution, although coming from a Maoist political orientation with which we often have differences, [1] makes the stakes of this debate crystal clear, as she combines personal experience, public policy research, and historical materialism to argue that Marxists cannot uphold what she calls “sex-trade-expansionary feminism.”

Content Warning: Descriptions of rape.

…

The right of the subordinated classes of men to buy access to women’s bodies has been used historically to break class solidarity in order to maintain the dominant social relations of the time. This was true in feudal Europe and remains true today: when proletarian and petit bourgeois men get to buy women too, they develop a false consciousness and build solidarity with bourgeois men of their own gender rather than aligning with women of their own class. And because the overthrow of capitalism is only possible by the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie, prostitution serves two great purposes: (1) allows bourgeois men access to a reserve army of women for their pleasure, and (2) prevent class consciousness and thus helps stop the proletariat from organizing as a class.

A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work” (2020)

The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution: II

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

To this must be added the following general consideration.

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia—and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance—represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.

The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution: II

Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Among the many problems that demand the consideration and attention of contemporary mankind, sexual problems are undoubtedly some of the most crucial. There isn’t a country or a nation, apart from the legendary “islands”, where the question of sexual relationships isn’t becoming an urgent and burning issue. Mankind today is living through an acute sexual crisis which is far more unhealthy and harmful for being long and drawn-out. Throughout the long journey of human history, you probably won’t find a time when the problems of sex have occupied such a central place in the life of society; when the question of relationships between the sexes has been like a conjuror, attracting the attention of millions of troubled people; when sexual dramas have served as such a never-ending source of inspiration for every sort of art.

Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle

The racial and class question

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The racial and class question

Virtually forgotten due to the discourse of Ukrainian unity and the general lack of interest in analyzing the nuances of events, the racial and class question is going virtually unnoticed in this war. If the Donbass conflict had a proletarian aspect that the press mocked in the first weeks of the DPR due to those Soviet-looking press conferences of workers and academics, in the current context, there have not even been any such comments. Presented as a war of national liberation, no aspect other than nationalism has deserved much mention in the Western press or in academia. Volodymyr Ishchenko and Ilya Matveev, who have sought to study the class aspect in the outbreak of the conflict, are the rare exception. To Ischenko’s surprise, RFE/RL published an article last September that dealt, albeit in generalities and without great depth, with the increase in inequality that war implies, an aspect that is, on the other hand, perfectly evident. “As the war drags on, the gaps in Ukrainian society are widening,” the American media headlines.

Read More »

Marxism and Psychological Science

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
1.1. The General Bases of Marxist Psychology

The teachings of Karl Marx caused a revolution in social sciences: in philosophy, in political economy, in the theory of socialism. As is known, psychology remained isolated from the influence of Marxism for many years. Marxism was not admitted into the official centers of scientific psychology, and the name of Karl Marx remained almost unmentioned in the works of psychologists for more than 50 years after the publication of his basic work.

Marxism and Psychological Science

Related:

Activity and Consciousness (PDF)

ON THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

ON THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP

In 1924 a famous manifesto was adopted at the Kuomintang’s First National Congress, which Sun Yat-sen himself led and in which Communists participated. The manifesto stated: 

The so-called democratic system in modern states is usually monopolized by the bourgeoisie and has become simply an instrument for oppressing the common people. On the other hand, the Kuomintang’s Principle of Democracy means a democratic system shared by all the common people and not privately owned by the few.