Moved this here because I watched the rest of the video and he gets shitty at the end.
How do we get people like Norm to stop being credulous about flawed science and fucking bigotry.
His larger point with the video is more interesting but it gets lost in anti-trans shit at the end
Haven’t seen this one but I did see one of his previous interviews with MEE that was more or less the same. Leaving his transphobia aside, I definitely agree with his point that what Trump represents is an appropriation of fascist aesthetics but with neither the mandate of destroying the left nor the false revolution. It’s basically just slop Mussolini with no communists to crush so it all becomes kayfabe instead.
you shouldn’t
Caution: This is in some ways a stream of consciousness. Please don’t hesitate to challenge and correct my thinking here.
Here is something I think people here can help me wrestle with. I’m leaving this comment here because I think this is another instance of this phenomenon I’ve seen sporadically from some left leaning individuals. I say Individuals because I do not think this is a broad sentiment within the left that simply goes unspoken. That is, this notion of “Not focusing on Identity Politics”, which at times I’ve seen coupled with “We need to focus on Class Politics”.
It is this inversion of the sentiment “Anything but class” into its polar opposite “Nothing but class”. How is it that people come to this conclusion, wherein the only thing they believe we should be struggling against is the Marxian class divide? To me, it would seem, by focusing strictly on class, you homogenize a large swath of society and, as such, dilute, erase, or otherwise ignore the struggles of the diverse demographic makeup of the proletariat. How is it that you can convince people deep in the margins of the proletariat that your movement can uplift them, if you can’t even articulate, as a result of having done zero analysis of these group’s various struggles, the ways in which society will be improved that resonate with their struggle?
Finkelstein’s entire message here falls apart, explicitly because of what he says at the very end. For someone who considers themselves an intellectual, it’s telling that he seems not to understand that historically fascist movements also scapegoated marginalized identity groups, and has not synthesized this truth into his broader understanding of fascist movements. This type of lukewarm understanding of fascism is what leads him to this conclusion that Trump is somehow not a true fascist. By their very existence, Trans People expose a fundamental contradiction within patriarchal capitalist society. If gender is fluid, if gender is not binary, if at birth you are not predetermined man or woman, then all forms of gender-based oppression are rendered functionless. As Engels states in Origin of Family, “The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.”
Devoid of the analysis of identity, we cannot come to the conclusion that queer and trans people’s very existence challenges this foundational form of class oppression. It seems clear to me, as someone who is a simple shitposter on an internet web form and not a world renown intellectual, that if people are allowed to be who they feel they truly are, without any boundaries or limitations; if they are allowed to be a woman today, and a man tomorrow, then this house of cards we call “Patriarchal Capitalist Society” falls apart. To be clear, I do understand it is not a simple matter of “Today I decided to be this or that”, but that is the simple, uncompassionate, reductionist perspective that lays at the heart of what Finkelstein is saying here. He deliberately speaks outside his field of expertise to cast a smoke cloud over the actual point he is giving to the fascists. That idea being, If we cannot rigidly define who is a man, and who is a woman, then how on earth can we exploit the “free gifts of nature” that spring forth from a person’s capacity to give birth? How can we legislate the bodies of the people we need to produce more laborers if we’ve also given those people the inalienable right to self identify?
He says that historically, fascism arises from a conflict with a growing and powerful [economic] left movement. He says this while ignoring the fact that one of the earliest acts of violence handed out by the growing German fascist movement, was in 1933, when they looted and destroyed the Institute for Sexual Science, burning all of its files and research. Likewise, he says this as Fascism under Mussolini results in the widespread targeting of homosexuals by Italian fascist police. It is as if this is a key element of Fascist oppression. That not only is this a capture of the economic arm of society but also the social side of society, with the goal of regressing the social culture back to a form more compatible with capitalist origins. An attempt to reinstate “the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage” and the “first class oppression…”, “…that of the female sex by the male.”, which ultimately requires the destruction of the idea that these categories are not rigid, and then reimplementing through violence the patriarchal gender binary.
Serious: Am I flying too close to the sun here? Am I wildly off base and need to do more reading? I know that could be entirely possible. It feels apparent to me why we shouldn’t be “leaving aside his transphobia” because his world view and understanding of the nature of capitalism is rooted in a patriarchal hierarchy, a hierarchy fundamental to the continuation of capitalism. This root allows him to dismiss what is clearly Fascism, as something he identifies as, not really fascism.
Your stream of thought is much clearer than my attempts to write coherently, good job!
People need to read Losurdo’s class struggle. It’s legitimately the best book that covers this (though from a historical and not specifically trans-supporting perspective), outlining how other struggles (and LGBTQ fits the mold perfectly) are class struggles. It honestly makes it super clear relative to the confusion made by “class reductionists” or “struggles outside of class” people.
Finkelstein seems to me to just be unwilling to see all class struggles intertwined and accepts his assumptions about trans struggle without consideration. He is, of course, not Marxist so I wouldn’t expect him to think this. But it is disappointing to see that this mistake can allow/lead to such hateful and incorrect positions.
I thought he was a former Marxist Leninist Maoist?
I should say, I’m not super familiar with his history or how he currently calls himself but his positions and analyses are markedly not Marxist. Maybe he was at some point or called himself Marxist, but he’s not now acting as a Marxist. He’s still often useful and giving good information, details, and arguments though. But a distinct filter needs to be used for applying his work to the world as a Marxist
Actually phenomenal point. You really can’t divorce this point from an understanding of fascism. I think I probably need to develop my thoughts on this new form of fascism then, because it does seem that by engaging in the reinforcement of gender lines and hostility against the trans people that soften or break them, fascism has a material gain to make. But I think we need to try to understand how this hostility can exist in the context of imperialism and the age of pinkwashing. Now, even though the watered down trans rights that have been conceded by the liberals in the West are not emancipatory, they do at least represent a crack in patriarchal logic. But they also represent a line of attack against Global South countries that have similar patriarchal structures but haven’t developed a cultural elite that fancies itself as being the vanguard of trans liberation, and thus can be painted as backward and regressive. So the interesting dialectic for me, is that the fascists more or less concede this line of attack (not entirely, obviously many far right politicians oppose women’s rights yet engage in pinkwashing rhetoric about Sharia law being bad for women’s rights), and seem less interested in that cultural project of conceding some symbolic and some minimal material benefits to minority groups as a way of wielding a new line of attack against the periphery.
But I definitely think that “class only Marxism” is not enough to actually understand what’s going on and it’s thoroughly useless at promoting participation from marginalized people.
Excellent post! Thank you for this.
Great post!
I’ve thought for a while that the task of uniting as a working class involves understanding, accommodating, and making retributions for all the intersectional lines by which we are divided. It’s crucial that the analysis goes beyond, “you’re black, I’m white, they use that to divide us, let’s get over it” but into the ways that these divisions are built on class antagonisms. Men as income earners and women as house keepers was a structurally necessary component of 20th century America’s particular flavour of capitalism, just as having people with darker skin perform the grunt work at their expense has been a ongoing feature of Anglo-American domination since the beginning of European colonialism.
very good post!
On this part in particular, you’ve lost me. It seems like, precisely due to the universalist nature of the class struggle, that it is the most comprehensible to the many as to how it would benefit a person and society, irrespective of any other particular concerns/struggles of such a person.
For example, suppose our broad class based solution is the nationalization of various industries (e.g., healthcare, housing, and telecommunications). If a person is struggling with rent, living in a slum, struggling to save to buy a place, or just unhappy with paying rent, it seems to me that such a person will see how this movement will improve their life and society even without an articulation of a struggle particular to that person. So too if the person has had any interaction with the American healthcare system or paid a phone bill (with respect to the other examples).
Except we live in a highly propagandized society, one where the medical and psychological needs specific to trans people are wildly depressed and rapidly eroding. Where the medical care of black people and women is full of racism and misogyny that leads to poor health outcomes. Where neurodivergence is under diagnosed or misdiagnosed by neurotypical doctors and psychologists. There is also the question of Native Americans, and how we must reconcile their past so they can have a prosperous future.
Would a person living in a slum intersecting with any of these identities be better served by better economic conditions? Obviously. Except that doesn’t address the social conditions that they live in. Which, I should point out are part of their material conditions.
Changing the economic relations doesn’t make society suddenly not racist, misogynist, homophonic, or transphobic. Something is to be done with the social relations as well. As Marx puts it in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
The transitional period where we are moving away from capitalist society and twords a socialist society will entail the restructuring and dismantlement of bourgeois law, and that will require using the power of the state to implement justice reforms for these marginalized groups.
In 1918, hot on the heels of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks put forward reforms to the rights of women, spearheaded by women in the Bolshevik party. Russian feminists largely influenced all manor of reforms that impacted the lives and conditions of the women living within its borders.
All you have presented me is a rising economic tide, which even bourgeois liberal society could accomplish. In what feels like over night women in the Soviet Union earned more rights and privileges and equal status in the workforce then they did in the decades before the revolution.
If we can not articulate what is to be gained trough revolutionary action by our comrades on the margins of society, then what hope is there for revolution? Why should they take the risk if there is no clear program in place to ensure their safety and equal status in society? This is why intersectionality maters. This is why we should be focusing on identity coupled with class.