#marxism

But it’s also helped immensely by the fact that Eurocentrism does not engage horrific parentheses abuse like The Liberal Virus does. I’m not kidding. That book uses way too many parenthesis in its sentences. It makes it easy to get lost. 😂

Anyway. Neat excerpt:

Protestant Europe—England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia—shared in the beginning some fragments of an ideology similar to that of the United States, conveyed by the return to the Bible, although certainly in attenuated forms, without comparison to the extreme forms of the sects that emigrated to New England. But in the countries in question, the working class succeeded in developing a clear-cut class consciousness, which the successive waves of immigration had prevented in the United States.

The emergence of workers parties made the difference. In Europe, they were the driving force behind combining liberal ideology with other value systems that are not only foreign to that ideology, but even conflict with it. These combinations naturally had their particular histories, which were different from one country and one time to another. But they preserved the autonomy of the political sphere in the face of the dominant economic sphere.

In the United States, there is no workers' party and there never has been. The communitarian ideologies were not and are not a substitute for a working-class socialist ideology, even the most radical of them in the black community. By definition, communitarianism is part and parcel of the context of widespread racism, which it fights on its own ground, but nothing more.

The combination specific to the historical formation of American society, a dominant biblical religious ideology and the absence of a workers' party, ultimately produced a still unparalleled situation, in which a de facto single party, the party of capital, holds the reigns. Today, American democracy is the advanced model of what I call low intensity democracy. It operates on the basis of a total separation between the management of political life, based on the practice of electoral democracy, and that of economic life, ruled by the laws of capital accumulation. What is more, this separation is not subject to radical questioning, but is rather part of what is called the general consensus. But this separation destroys all the creative potential of political democracy. It castrates representative institutions, making them impotent when facing the market, whose dictates are accepted without question.

By contrast, in Europe, the state has been (and can become again) the necessary site for the confrontation of social interests. It has thereby encouraged the historical compromises that give meaning and real significance to democratic practice. If the state is not constrained to fulfill this function by class struggles and political struggles that remain independent from the exclusive processes of capital accumulation, then democracy becomes a derisory practice, which it is in the United States.

So I think it’s good to read Losurdo’s Stalin: History And Critique Of A Black Legend and V.L Allen’s The Russians Are Coming: The Politics Of Anti-Sovietism (specifically chapter 6).

They do a good job of showing how pervasive antisemitism was a century ago in the West. And there are a number of historical parallels you can draw with antisemitism then and the suffocating Islamophobia of today—and it is suffocating. Islamophobia is a fucking reflex in many places around the world today and it’s horrifying.

Losurdo has various historical examples from a century ago and his book is much longer so there’s a lot of take in.

While Allen’s ambition in chapter 6 is more focused, since he deconstructs Zionist deflection of criticisms of “Israel”… he’s writing from the late 80s so he shows that yeah “Israel” has always cynically used antisemitism as a shield for their crimes.

*Not in those exact words, they actually just said they found what I said "vis trans and Marxism really interesting" and they're "very into Marxism and phenomenology of identity at the moment", but y'know if I can steer them into actual transfeminism that would be good

hi!! yes ive been working on this for a bit. unfortunately as ive said its tricky and resources are sparse but ive got a lot more than when i first set out on this. im writing some stuff of my own to add to it and compile a lot of feminist and marxist texts through a transfeminist perspective but that wont be ready for some time, so for now heres some stuff i can recommend. for explicitly marxist transfeminism, the main place id point is evalyn penrose.

another work ive been recommended on is marxism and transgender liberation, which should be particularly revelant to your context, though i still need to read it myself

I can also recommend some critiques of dominant feminism's and where they go wrong, Angela Davis' Women Race and Class is one of my favorites, if you're not familiar she was a member of the Black Panther Party, which should give you an idea of her perspective. there is also Enemy Feminisms by Sophie Lewis, she is not a marxist but is a believe a transfem anarchist, so slightly off but still critiques a lot of these issues from a transfeminist perspective. There is also Philosophical Trends of the Feminist Movement by Anuradha Ghandy, a maoist organizer in India. She critiques both radical feminism and terfs, as well as liberal feminisms and even some errors of socialist feminists.

If you want marxist feminism more generally, Sankaras speeches and most of Kollontais writings are good (Social basis of the womens question, etc), but for transfeminism specifically much of it is still in the realm of liberalism (something I am trying to fix), so not much will replace some of the basic foundations yet, like Serano and Crenshaw. Jules Gil-Peterson professes to marxism, but honestly i wasn't a huge fan of A short history of transmisogyny. It may still be worth the read but it requires some scrutiny in my view, in some ways its actually rather anti-transfeminist. I've not read histories of the transgender child but it might be worth looking into further, I'll probably get to it eventually. Similarly Ive heard mixed reviews on Transgender Marxism but given the name its worth noting at the very least.

Bhatt has her own host of problems but I do think The Third Sex is worth a read for people unfamiliar with transfeminism to familiarize themselves with how transmisogyny is often laundered through the language of decolonial feminism.

I can get you links to all of this if you need, just let me know. Serano has whipping girl of course but also a few good articles on her blog, Crenshaw has plenty of writings but the main ones I tend to reference are Demarginalizing the intersection and Mapping the Margins. other short resources that are helpful are Girls you can hit by the part for reclamation and survival, as well as hot allostatic load and the abusers guide if you're wanting to familiarize anyone with how callout posts are often leveraged against transfems in particular. you can also sometimes connect this with Davis' and Crenshaw's writings about sexual purity being weaponized against minorities, if deeper analysis is up for discussion.

I know not all of this is exactly what you've asked for but I was just making a new list earlier and I figured I might as well be somewhat more exhaustive here so I can share this as a more current list of writings on transfeminism which I'd recommend.

I will probably update this more in the future and people are welcome to send me their recommendations, i know theres a lot of smaller writers working on the topic and I'm happy to check those out as relevant. This is just most of where I'm at so far.