Letters

Trans rights

I enjoyed Mike Macnair’s exploration on ‘Marxism and trans liberation’, though the Online Communist Forum of November 4 would no doubt have benefited from another discussion partner/opponent. Hopefully, Roxy Hall (who had to cancel at short notice) will be able to speak on the issue at a future OCF.

I remain unconvinced by comrade Macnair’s assertion that questions of trans liberation should not and cannot “be part of the minimum programme” - ie, the body of “immediate demands that are the minimum conditions on which the party would be prepared to enter government” and that are “aimed at strengthening the position of the working class as a class in a society that remains either capitalist or a ‘mixed economy’ under workers’ political rule”, as the comrade has defined it in his substantial article on the trans question in the Weekly Worker of August 29.

Macnair argued both in that article and the recent OCF that most demands relevant to trans people are already covered in the minimum programme (around a fully-funded healthcare system). Plus, he argued that there “is a real danger of overspecificity, and this is not just a matter of too much text, but of constructing the programme as a sort of intersectional coalition agreement based on the cumulation of the specific demands of specific groups. This latter approach is anti-solidaristic: not just in relation to trans, but equally in relation to women, racial minorities, and so on.”

His main argument in the OCF, however, was that trans people can only really become fully liberated with the abolition of the family as an economic unit - and that means trans liberation has to be part of the maximum programme. I entirely agree, of course, that trans people can only be really free under communism. The same goes for everybody else, mind, including women, gays and lesbians. And yet we feature in the minimum programme quite a few “specific demands” for those “specific groups” - and quite right too.

Different sections of society experience different levels and aspects of oppression. Women don’t just suffer from the general exploitation by the capitalist class, but are being specifically and additionally exploited in the family as the main carer for children and the elderly. Transgender people suffer from the general bigotry in society, but specifically also from the underfunding of gender clinics, which means they often have to wait for many years before they will even be seen by a healthcare professional. They also suffer specifically from the requirement to opt for either ‘male’ or ‘female’ in most official documents, which can push them into making choices they might not otherwise make.

Recognising those differences of oppression does not (automatically) make us into intersectionalists or mean that we are ignoring the struggles of other people and putting oppressions in some kind of hierarchy - it merely shows that we are taking those different experiences seriously and that we will take measures to overcome them.

But our current programme mentions transgender people only once, in describing their oppression: “Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, etc have often been scapegoated or persecuted. They are portrayed as threats to timeless religious values, sexual norms and the nuclear family - the basic economic unit of capitalist society. Bigoted attitudes divide the working class and aid those advocating the authoritarian state. The working class needs to be mobilised in order to defend and advance sexual freedom.”

Point 3.16 then goes on to put forward various demands around ‘sexual freedom’, including demands for equal rights for homosexuals - but nothing about how to deal with the real discrimination faced by transgender people.

I hope we can discuss this issue more fully in the Weekly Worker and in party meetings, but it seems to me that there is a clear need (and space) to deal with the specific oppression of transgender people. Not just for ‘moral’ reasons or because so many young people have very strong views on the matter. This is clearly not just a temporary ‘fad’, but a very real phenomenon in society that communists should take seriously. Featuring this issue clearly in our programme also means we do not leave it to the intersectionalists - but that we try and win over transgender people to the fight for communism.

A short point along the following lines would be a good and necessary addition to our programme, I think: “Abolish the requirement to register gender on public and state documents. Immediate and easy access to fully-funded gender clinics offering advice and medical support, up to and including gender reassignment surgery.”

Carla Roberts
London

Zionist response

From the opposing, unbridgeable side of the gulf that separates us, I ask your permission to comment on Jack Conrad’s vitriolic articles on Jews and their history (eg, supplement, Weekly Worker October 31).

The ill-intent permeating his approach is perhaps not so self-evident to your readers. The underlying thesis is that the stories told in the Tanach (five books of Moses) are evidently historically false. The inevitable mendacious conclusion is that Judaism, which places such importance on the Tanach, is fundamentally false and therefore legitimately subject to his, the CPGB’s and the world’s sarcasm and derision.

Conrad studiously ignores that 2,000-plus years of Jewish lived life and experience is based on the Tanach, the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash, Kabbalah, Zohar, Maimonides and so many others, with generations of multi-language commentary, disputation and interpretation. All building ways of life were guided - often dictated - by law, custom and community. Once upon a recent time, an important stream of Jewish thought positioned ‘Menchishkeit’ with leftwing activity (that was then; this is now).

Each and every Friday evening, across the years, Jews have recited “... in love and favour, have given us the holy Sabbath as an inheritance, a memorial of the creation … in remembrance of the departure from Egypt.” The entire institution of the Passover service (the most effective Zionist festival ever) is built around the story of the departure from slavery in Egypt. Songs, stories, food, ancient debates, legends, from Afghanistan, Baghdad, Yemen to Morocco, Spain to Siberia.

Conrad and his ilk are also referenced by: “sheh b’kol dor v’dor omdeem aleinu, l’kaloteinu ...” (In every generation [they] rise up against us, to exterminate us).

Does Conrad profess, or hope, that facile pointing out that there is no historical evidence for most biblical events whatsoever will cut the ground from under Jews? Does anyone think that Jewish communities don’t consider reality? Two millennia sustained by some mystical Orwellian doublethink? Just who, exactly, does Conrad expect to be influenced by such Hyde Park Corner rabble-rousing? The animus and hostility are classic. We recognise it. Is the CPGB membership comfortable with this counter-theology? What audience is he addressing?

By the by, does Conrad know Aramaic, the Mesopotamian languages influencing Hebrew, the music of biblical Hebrew, its jokes, puns, methods of poetical emphasis, euphemisms, alliteration? Here is a quote from the first paragraph of the introduction to Robert Alter’s three-volume bible: “There is ... something seriously wrong with all the familiar English translations. The (modern) problem is a shaky sense of English and in the case of the King James version, a shaky sense of Hebrew.”

For those who prefer a more authentic telling of our story, please see The story of the Jews, by Sir Simon Schama (volume I. ‘Biblical and medieval times’, and II, ‘1492-2000’, which are easily available (volume III to be published soon).

John Davidson
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No possibility

Jack Conrad’s article, ‘Searching for solutions’ (Weekly Worker July 4 2024), roundly rubbishes mooted solutions to the Zionist destruction of what remains of Palestine and its people: one-state, two-state, and federal solutions are dismissed. In their stead, the comrade outlines his “communist alternative”.

He provides a detailed and useful history of Zionism and Palestinian resistance, current Israeli and Palestinian politics, and a survey of the British left. After demolishing the positions of the Socialist Workers Party’s Alex Callinicos, the Labour left, the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, and various leftist flotsam and jetsam, Conrad moves to laying out his communist stall: “The only realistic, progressive and humane programme must be based on a mutual recognition by both Palestinians and Israeli Jews of each other’s national rights (my emphasis).

Having already dismissed the prospect of joint action by the Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish working class to overturn Zionism, the comrade asks us to accept the possibility of the two nations mutually recognising each other’s national rights. A stretch, especially when one considers that their national rights are counterposed.

Further, this begs the questions: how can a people exercise their national rights without control of a definite territory? And how can two peoples exercise their national rights when both lay claim to the same small patch of land?

Comrade Conrad’s solution appears to be to subsume Palestinian national identity within a wider Arab nationhood. He writes that an Arab Socialist Republic “could offer [a Jewish] Israel federal status” within a wider, federal Socialist Arabia. However, Conrad does not explain where the borders of his mooted Israeli socialist republic will lie, what happens to the Israeli-Jewish settlers and their settlements and, importantly, what happens to the Palestinians.

Andy Hannah
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Still with SWP

I am emailing your publication because I was notified that you wrote an article where you questioned why I, Sophie Squire, had stopped writing on Palestine for Socialist Worker (‘Racists against racism’, October 31).

Thank you for the concern, but there is no mystery or intrigue about why I no longer write for the paper regularly. After four years I have decided to pursue a career in teaching. My politics are still firmly aligned with the politics of the paper and, as far as I am aware, there is no “disquiet” at the heart of the editorial board.

I am still in alignment with Socialist Worker in its writing on Palestine and against Zionism. I am also with my comrades in their strategy on how to fight against fascism and the far right. I don’t particularly want to waste time arguing about what you wrote in your article or had on the cover of your paper - I have better things to do. But I would like to clear up any heresy about why I no longer write regularly and defend myself and the paper.

In solidarity

Sophie Squire

Hellhole Korea

The recent visit of the foreign secretary David Lammy to the capitalist hellhole that is south Korea - or the ‘Republic of Korea’ (ROK) - was a serious provocation against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Lammy’s visit demonstrated that the British government is joining hands with the south Korean fascist puppets against People’s Korea and conspiring together to overthrow Juche-based socialism. This visit comes not long after the drone intrusion against the DPRK by the ROK (and may have been deliberately timed to coincide with the recent provocative actions), so the UK is basically condoning the actions of the south Korean puppets.

It is wrong for Britain to support south Korea, which is a fascist puppet regime and a colony of US imperialism, where people live in poverty and work the longest hours in the whole world. The ROK is occupied by US troops. We call upon Britain to end its support for south Korea. There should be no British aid for south Korea and no British troops there, nor British naval ships in Korean waters.

As for the so-called ‘joint statement’ issued by the ROK puppets and the British foreign secretary, it is complete nonsense. There are no DPRK troops in Ukraine - that is simply a lie. British policy on the DPRK is based on lies and untruths, such as the total baloney about the DPRK sending a large number of troops to Ukraine and rubbish about ‘human rights violations’.

Although the government in the UK changed hands in the last few months, the new government’s policy towards the DPRK is the same as its predecessor, with its hostile policies, and backing both the US imperialists and the scum like the ROK puppets. So the Starmer regime is not only cutting winter fuel payments and reducing living standards, but it is supporting regime change attempts on the Korean peninsula.

Defend People’s Korea against British imperialist regime-change attempts!

Dermot Hudson
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