[The Immortal Goon]

I do understand the objection to our rejection of identity politics, but as has been pointed out, we don't oppose those causes so much as the causes to the exclusion of everything else. Which we are probably sensitive about on the left because there is a lot of energy put into these things while ignoring the cause of them.

I would say, still, that even after a glorious revolution legislating this kind of thing is counterproductive and counter revolutionary. Regardless, nobody wants to go back to a feudal conception of marriage as a land contract used by families and virgins. I think the residual hang ups about sexuality and gender will be gone when the system itself is smashed.

[Technology]

That's why those of us who want to see a society without oppression and exploitation cast our lot with the working masses.

That's a moral goal.

I think the residual hang ups about sexuality and gender will be gone when the system itself is smashed.

Do you have a back up plan if you are wrong about that?

[KlassWar]

That's a moral goal.

It is, but the beauty of it is that achieving it relies on the working masses acting ruthlessly in pursuit of their own class interests. Irrespective of any moral goals people may or may not hold, it's objectively in the collective self-interest of the working masses to annihilate the propertied classes and collectivize all their shit.

That's the beauty of the whole thing: The only thing that's required to smash oppression and exploitation (and it's in our interest to get rid of it), is for the working masses to organize in pursuit of their interests and destroy the class enemy.

Do you have a back up plan if you are wrong about that?

As a matter of fact I do: If prudish moralism, xenophobia and general fucked-up backwardness persist after the abolition of private property, ruthlessly suppress those who still hold them until they decide to drop them.

[Technology]

As a matter of fact I do: If prudish moralism, xenophobia and general fucked-up backwardness persist after the abolition of private property, ruthlessly suppress those who still hold them until they decide to drop them.

But if you're relying on the end of capitalism to end the other stuff in the first place, then "conservative communists" may become the leaders of the worker's state, as Stalin did, because the only filtering you are doing at that point is on the basis of anticapitalism. Failing to head them off at the pass allows them to gain a potential advantage that won't suddenly disappear later. Ignoring the issue until it's too late, in other words.

This does put you in a difficult position, because you want to maintain the big tent needed to unite the workers, but it is an issue you might have to deal with. It all depends on how "progressive" the leaders of ML movements are willing to be. I suppose it's clearer now, given that left-liberals are the most likely to be radicalized towards the Marxist-Leninist position in difficult times, and the conservatives on the issues Rei is worried about are more likely to line up down the current axis whereby the guys who want to defend capitalism are also social conservatives on the main.

There's nothing stopping you ruining this advantageous situation by trying to broaden appeal to social conservatives and alienating the larger group of social liberals who are far more likely to become communists, of course. Seeing the "identity issues" as peripheral is a weakness, because you then lack a way to propagandize the progressive masses into supporting your coalition for their own reasons.

Ultimately, it all depends on how trends will be maintained and how you react to them. Now is not the time for your revolution clearly, but when it is time, what will the cultural and social landscape look like? I don't think you can ignore it to assume that current trends will be maintained.

Good luck, guys/girls/third genders/otherkin/etc!

[Dagoth Ur]

I'm surprised that Conscript uses RevLeft as any kind of guide for a good Marxist platform. Try to assert the primacy of class struggle there and see what happens. Every anti-marxist troll there will shit on you with every other troll thanking their posts. For fuck's sake they regularly question whether class is even important. If anything RevLeft is the final nail in the coffin of left-communism and all the deviations that will come of it.

Re: identity politics, my main issue is who mainly supports these movements and consequently castrates them, ie white bourgeoisie with too much time on their hands. I've gotten flack for years over the fact that I think racial agitation is a big part of Marxism in America, and the same can be said for my belief in gender agitation. But I would still shout at anyone who tried to claim that these agitations were for any other purpose than unifying the working class against Capital. Too bad that the mainstream examples of nearly all "Identity Politics" are completely dominated by those who cause the problem in the first place. An example is how Paternalist Feminism seems to be the only feminism you ever hear about, let alone gets reported on.

[fuser]

But Marxist communism makes very strong claims about what it is right to do. Foremost it is not right for the bourgeois to exploit the proletariat,

Right? What does right have to do with this. Where does marxism talk about "right of exploitation"?

so as a communist you want to end that by advancing the stages of production and ultimately ending class. That is a moral goal about how society should be run (how people should live their lives).

That doesn't follow as your premise was faulty. See it this way, let's say you are being beaten by a bully with a stick, now what the fuck morality has to do with if you are looking to defend yourself (class struggle) and then taking his stick and burning it so that he never uses that (end classes). That is a very pressing material goal not moral.

You can ignore morality, but you can't remove it from politics. Either you take an active position on laws regulating lifestyle, or your compatriots who are more interested in it will do it for you.

That will depend on time and place, laws will be governed by material conditions and not universal moral ideals. As Marx explicitly said, Communism is not realisation of moral goals.

Beside I want to end oppression and exploitation because precisely I (as in working class) am being exploited and that is a very material goal, now some may join the movement out of morality but Marxism itself is not an idealist system looking for moral remedies.