Letters

Trans anger

Devon Laing’s May 29 letter is rhetorically angry, but not politically useful. To begin with, as comrade Farzad Kamangar said in our aggregate discussion of my draft theses, “the theses on trans liberation are written for communists rather than an attempt to attract trans people as members”.

This reflects a fundamental issue: we are not seeking to sell papers at trans rights demos, or to “manage and coordinate” the struggles, but to promote the idea of a political voice for the working class which combats the politics of the advertising-funded media and undermines the claims to loyalty of the nation-state and the current constitution. We want to promote the idea of the left organising in a political party for this purpose - as opposed to just trying to recruit activists out of currently fashionable struggles or “managing and coordinating” struggles. Combatting the Christianist-Tory witch-hunt round trans is, from our point of view, part of this larger task; but so, also, is combatting the Eurocommunist or Democratic Leadership Council politics comrade Laing defends, which are widely held on the left and are disastrous.

Secondly, comrade Laing argues that it is illegitimate to criticise the political line they support without participating in the actions they carry on. Very similarly, in the late 1960s to 1970s, some advocates of the line of armed struggle (guerrilla warfare) argued that there could be no legitimate criticism of this line without participating in the armed struggle. The line of armed struggle was a dead end, and the ‘official communist’ and Trotskyist critics of it were unequivocally right. Armed struggle was more risky for the participants than the lines of no-platforming opponents and alliance with the liberals - but less risky for everyone else. The 1973 coup in Chile was not caused by the MIR but by the US response to the electoral victory of Popular Unity; the 1976 coup in Argentina was not caused by the Montoneros or the PRT-ERP but by the US responses to mass forms of class struggle. In contrast, the line of no-platforming opponents and alliance with the liberals has been responsible for creating a political opening for a violent conservative counter-offensive.

Third, and following immediately from this issue, “the CPGB is not opposing the fash”. US Socialist Workers Party leader Farrell Dobbs explained in 1975 that the policy of ‘crushing fascism in the egg’ by minority confrontation plays into the hands of the fascists: “You are losing ground in the mobilisation of the real class that can do away with fascism, and the fascists are gaining ground as a result.” As I have pointed out previously (‘Crushing it in the egg’ Weekly Worker October 24 2024), the history of the left’s attempts to “oppose the fash” by this method since 1975 absolutely confirms the truth of Dobbs’s judgment.

Comrade Laing argues that “The Tories asked for a slate of policies that could help trans people, then they picked the one that seemed the easiest to actually work on. That was self-ID. We ended up having to fight on this one and the fight has been picked again and again.” This was like the frog who accepted the scorpion’s promise not to sting in return for a lift across the river.

Finally, the question of arguments for the social construction of biology refers quite specifically to the arguments of Judith Butler and other Foucaultians. And these arguments do logically entail the truth of marginal-utility economics - unsurprisingly, since their rise to prominence was part of the general rise of neoliberalism (of which Foucault was part). The same goes for comrade Laing’s bullet, “trans extreme”. It may also go for comrade Laing’s bullet, “trans lite”: the reason being that the costs of human reproduction (pregnancy, childcare) enter into the reproduction costs of labour power, so that it is impossible to disregard (for the present) the connection of ‘biological sex’ to reproductive capacity.

The rest seems to me to be just expressed anger rather than argument.

Mike Macnair
Oxford

Trans identity

It is useful that the CPGB is debating the question of trans rights, given the issue has so divided the left - one side is tailing mechanical biological determinists and becoming ‘useful idiots’ for conservatives, while the other is tailing identitarian and idealist trans ideologists, many of whom brook no discussion on the matter. Both these camps are clearly wrong.

Thanks to Ian Spencer for his report on the aggregate, at which I was an invited observer (‘Trans rights and open polemic’ May 29). However, he seems to have misunderstood what I said. My apologies for not making my points clearer. In particular, the point I was trying to make about the recognition of Aboriginal heritage and identity in Australia is misrepresented.

To be recognised as Aboriginal for purposes of medical, housing and some employment purposes has a triple requirement: Aboriginal descent (a material matter), self-identification (individual) and Aboriginal community acceptance (social). Legally, at least, one can’t simply self-identify as Aboriginal. I did not say that there were widespread attempts to self-identify as a “basis for state support” - this is a rancid slur from the rabid right wing.

I did, however, raise the question of why gender self-identification is considered differently to ethnic or ‘racial’ identity, given that both gender and ‘race’ are social constructs. Why does Aboriginal identity require a material, individual and social ‘test’, whereas gender identity only requires an individual ‘test’?

If anything, there is a closer connection between biology and gender than there is between biology and ‘race’. And women’s lived experience of oppression continues - an oppression with its roots in the sexual division of labour and the ‘world historic defeat of the female sex’ in the transition to class society thousands of years ago. Individual experience of that oppression starts at birth - or even beforehand in instances of sex-selected abortion.

I raised the case of Rachel Dolezal in the US, who self-identifies as black, although she was born to white parents. A written heckle in the Zoom comments said that she is “mentally ill”. I have no knowledge of her mental health, but I did point out that this is a slur thrown at transsexual people. Arguments against ‘transracialism’, to my mind, are generally quite weak, with most claiming racial oppression accumulates over generations, while gender oppression somehow does not.

Further, I said that, if we accept gender is socially constructed, then there are and can be more than two genders, while for the purposes of reproduction, sex is binary (though manifests strongly bimodally). Many pre-capitalist societies had multiple recognised gender roles. So, while the slogan, ‘Transwomen are women’, might be catchy, it falls back on a conservative, capitalist-era gender binary.

I also said that there is now general, concrete unity on the left in terms of lesbian and gay rights. However, no doubt differences remain on whether people are ‘born gay’ or sexuality is socially constructed after birth, or a mix. Hopefully people no longer believe in the ‘gay gene’.

The CPGB theses on all this are okay as a start, but I think that, if there was a deeper theoretical understanding of the issue (from CPGB members and the left in general, myself included), then they would probably be shorter and clearer. We need a united position for the defence of trans rights that also allows for differences of opinion - and discussion - as to why people are transsexual. Demands to no-platform people in these debates are worse than useless - but the concrete defence of transsexual people and their right to live as they choose should be without question.

Martin Greenfield
Australia

Trans error

The CPGB’s potential pivot to an anti-materialist position on the trans issue has the makings of a serious error. A person simply claiming to be of the opposite sex to that which was observed at birth does not make it so, and a party stating otherwise is unlikely to be taken seriously by the working class.

Incidentally, while it may appear to be true, as Devon Laing asserts in a rather amusing, but useful, letter lambasting Mike Macnair’s draft theses (‘Communism and trans liberation’, May 1) for not going far enough down the anti-materialist road, “The CPGB knows we [ie, trans rights activists] are powerful in the leftwing spaces communists work in” (Letters, May 29), that isn’t straightforwardly the case. Many young communists in recent years have joined organisations with a public, materialist line on the trans question (Young Communist League in 2021-22, Revolutionary Communist Party in 2023-24), making it highly questionable that a “pivot to trans” would appeal to many potential recruits to the CPGB - aside perhaps from a handful of semi-syndicalists from Manchester and a smattering of RS21 dissidents.

I am myself not so cynical as to suspect the draft theses to be aimed at the latter, and prefer to believe that, despite the coincidence of their emergence at the same time as the ‘communist fusion’ process, they are a genuine attempt to engage with an issue which has seriously divided the left for a decade or so.

On the substantive issues, there are two straightforward questions communists who seek to lead the working class will need to answer, each of which can be broken into two parts. One is philosophical and the other practical. The questions require concise answers that a worker can understand and communicate to others effectively, not thousands of words of legalistic waffle.

The first (1a) is: Does it matter what a woman is?

To answer ‘no’ is clearly not a Marxist response, and would alienate enormous sections of the working class, particularly women. To answer ‘yes’ naturally leads on to the second part of the question (1b): What is your definition of a woman?

To not answer this clearly, or to deflect by saying that to ask the question at all is to reveal the asker to be the victim of rightwing culture war propaganda (the position taken by Macnair’s theses), or by talking about the minuscule number of intersex people in the world (as Macnair has also done on occasion) will lead to communists not being taken seriously by workers.

The second question, again in two parts, is practical: (2a) Should anyone who wants to do so be able to access spaces reserved for women?

The answer to this from the trans rights activists and liberal equality advocates is ‘yes’. It is the real-world consequences of mass organisations adopting this as policy, and not some concocted moral panic, which has led to this issue becoming a major contested area in society. Answering ‘yes’ to this statement ultimately led the NHS to a position whereby a nurse in Darlington, abused by her father as a child and upset by having to share a changing room with a natal male colleague, was told by her bosses when she went for a gynaecological procedure at the same hospital she worked at, that she had no right to request the same colleague be stood down from being in theatre. So it is difficult to see how communists can answer ‘yes’ to this question and be taken seriously by workers. CPGB members appear to accept the concept of women’s safe spaces in prisons (although even this is not directly stated in Macnair’s theses), and perhaps mental health facilities, but not elsewhere in society- a muddle-headed position.

Answering no to 2a leads to 2b: Should campaigning for trans rights therefore be focused on safe and accessible ‘third spaces’ rather than access to women’s spaces for all?

Devon Laing is clear that this is a bad idea, and directs us to read a book by a third world feminist to explain why, but communists seeking to lead the working class need a better answer than that. It seems to me that to answer ‘yes’ to this question is the only logical first step to begin to find a way out of the appallingly divisive identity politics trap that these sex and gender questions have laid for the labour movement - with real-world consequences in my own trade union in having driven out of activity or exhausted Marxists on both ‘sides’.

Campaigning for third spaces won’t please everyone, but appears on the face of it to be the most immediate beginning of a compromise solution. Some of comrade Macnair’s thesis 18 supports this position, but alongside a view that single sex spaces should be phased out - without any explanation of why. There is no recognition in the theses of the massively increasing levels of sexism, misogyny and men’s violence against women and girls in society (the latter up 3 % between 2018 and 2023), and thus no engagement with the idea that women may quite reasonably want to keep single-sex spaces intact.

Neither trans rights campaigners nor women determined to defend single sex spaces are going to go away, on the left or in wider society. The solution has to be to work through the issues - something refused by the ‘no debate’ advocates for the last 10 years or more. The Supreme Court judgement could be an opportunity for that side of the debate to take stock and begin to talk to feminist activists on the other side - that looks unlikely at the moment, but it is the role of communists to advocate for and facilitate that outcome, not pile in (a decade or so late, as Laing points out) on the trans rights activists’ side.

Mike Macnair’s draft theses provide no answers to the questions above, and a CPGB move from the previous position of strategic neutrality on the trans issue to a more partisan position is likely to please no-one. I was glad to see the draft theses were not put to the vote at your recent aggregate, although the report of the discussion makes it sound like a rather worrying mess.

Back to the drawing board, comrades.

Sean Carter
email

Reform outrage

To say I am outraged at the vile slander advanced by John Smithee in last week’s paper would be a mild description of how I feel (Letters, May 29). But I am equally disgusted at Peter Manson, the editor, for having printed it, as if it was a legitimate comment.

I’m all for robust debate - even insults, if it comes to it - but slander is just that. Nothing in my comment implies support for bloody Reform, at least from me. I was discussing the reasons why so many decent working class folks are being won to Reform’s programme - actually demands which were working class demands originally and Farage has picked up on them. I am talking about the reconstruction of industry and the scrapping of net zero, etc, not the whole immigration distraction here.

John Smithee might think we can stop the growth of Reform by not talking about this resonance, or by condemning all those who support Reform as racists and fascists. He clearly thinks anyone such as me who dares to try and analyse rather than just froth and scream about it is a Reform supporter too. This isn’t debate - this is the worst kind of censorship: intimidation by slander to the point no-one dares speak for fear of being vilified and publicly humiliated. It’s almost worked, as I’m contemplating ending my long relationship with the paper for letting this piece of scandalous abuse be circulated.

As to the substance of the slander, I’ve 65 years of class struggle, internationalism and anti-racist, anti-fascist work and actions to speak for me and my record (and I’ve never heard of John Smithee).

Carl Collins, on the other hand, makes some important points in taking the question seriously in the same issue. The two letters couldn’t be more different in quality and comradely discussion.

I’m still smarting under such a filthy and low-life attack on me being permitted in the paper. Honestly, comrades, I thought there were some standards we could depend on and I’m deeply disappointed.

Dave Douglass
South Shields