Gender and Ideology - For a Marxist critique of gender ideology

Gender and Ideology

For a Marxist critique of gender ideology

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of gender ideology in a critical and Marxist perspective. Criticism of the gender ideology is now a must, as well as present their social roots and their relationship to a particular historical period. Based on the critical analysis of the work of Joan Scott and his inspiring sources, especially Bourdieu, it seeks to show the ideological roots of gender conception.

Keywords: Gender, Ideology, category, Marxism, Poststructuralism, domination, sex.

The present paper aims to discuss the issue of gender ideology. We won’t do an archeology of genre term, as some have done (Stolke, 2004), nor will pursue its etymological roots, nor its past uses, but only its recent use and its ideological character. The critique of gender ideology is, nowadays, a necessity as well as present its social roots and its bond with a certain historical period.

Before we begin, let’s clarify what we mean by ideology, since this is a polysemic term. Here we use the Marxist conception of ideology (Marx and Engels, 1991), according to which it is a systematization of false consciousness, that is, a illusory thinking system. Ideology is a systematic way of false consciousness produced by the ideologists. What we term as gender ideology is the conception that places the construct[1] “gender” as a fundamental term of the analysis of the issue of women and even of society as a whole.

We won't present here the most diverse works that discuss and use the construct “gender”. We will elect one of the most cited and influential works on this issue for analysis, although other references are made throughout this text. It is the text of the historian Joan Scott (1986), Gender: A Usefull Category of Historical Analysis. Joan Scott presents in her text an overview of different conceptions of feminist thought and of the use of the construct (which she denominated category) genre. The various concepts are presented descriptively, with superficial observations, and the author's point of view is presented peripherally, with a minimum contribution to the discussion around the issue that is proposed to treat. In fact, this defect to take long descriptions of feminist conceptions, consisting of all or almost all of the text, is quite common and is repeated in Scott's article. She states that the term gender in its most recent use occurred among American feminists, “who wanted to insist on the fundamentally social quality of distinctions based on sex”. This use was aiming to reject biological determinism that would be implicit in the use of the terms “sex” and “sexual difference”. The term gender would present a relational view and would present men and women in reciprocal terms, preventing the separate study of both. But the author points out that more important than that is that gender “was a term offered by those who claimed that women’s scholarship would fundamentally transform disciplinary paradigms” (Scott, 1986, p. 1054). A new methodology and epistemology would be with the term gender, giving it meaning. However, this position did not come right away:

For the most part, the attempts of historians to theorize about gender have remained within tradicional social scientific frameworks, using longstanding formulations that provide universal causal explanations. These theories have been limited at best because they tend to contain reductive or overly simple generalizations that undercut not only history’s disciplinary sense of the complexity of social causation but also feminist commitments to analyses that will lead to change (Scott, 1986, p. 1054).

After that, the author criticizes the descriptive uses of those who use the term gender, as well as analyzes the feminist conceptions starting from the perspective of the origin of patriarchy, of Marxism, until reach the post-structuralism and the American and British approach of “relation of object”. She makes some pertinent criticisms of some of these conceptions, but is rather superficial and does not connect more effectively with her own conception. However, what interests us here is precisely Scott's position. In this context, it is crucial her definition of gender:

My definition of gender has two parts and several subsets. They are interrelated but must be analytically distinct. The core of the definition rests on an integral connection between two propositions: gender is a constitutive elemento of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power. Changes in the organization of social relationships Always correspond to changes in representations of power, but the direction of change is not necessarily one way (Scott, 1986, p. 1067).

According to Scott, this definition involves four related elements: 1) the culturally available symbols evoke symbolic representations; 2) there are normative concepts that present interpretations regarding the meaning of the symbols, in order to reduce and contain their metaphoric possibilities; 3) the new conception task is to overcome the notion of fixity and timelessness of the binary gender representation, revealing its connection with politics, with the institutions and social organization; 4) The subjective identity or the “gendered identities” are built, and it's needed to relate it to “a range of activities, social organizations, and historically specific cultural representations” (Scott, 1986, p. 1068). She reveals the key to her conception (Scott, 1986, p. 1069):

The first part of my definition of gender consists, then, of all four of these elements, and no one of them operates without the others. Yet they do not operate simultaneously, with one simply reflecting the others. A question for historical research is, in fact, what the relationships amont the four aspects are. The sketch I have offered of the process of constructing gender relationships could be used to discuss class, race, ethnicity, or, for that matter, any social process. My point was to clariy and specify how one needs to think about the effect of gender in social and institutional relationships, because this thinking is often not done precisely or sistematically. The theorizing of gender, however, is developed in my second proposition: gender is a primary field within which or by means of which power is articulated. Gender is not the only field, but it seems to have been a persistent and recurrent way of enabling the signification of power in the West, in Judeo-Christian as well as Islamic tradicions.

Thus here we have a particular ideology of genre that will be widely used by researchers of various human sciences and become a great reference, both in academic thinking in this area as of feminist thought. Thereby, this ideology arises of the refusal of biological determinism, of essentialism, and ends up proposing a paradigmatic transformation, presenting gender as a cultural construction and is in the founder field of power relations. This conception is ideological, that is, false, although, like every ideology, has moments of truth.

The refusal of biologism is important and necessary, however, when extrapolating this and presenting a rejection of “biological” (we would say, of corporeality and its importance) – although this was not explicitly stated, but it was practiced in the rest of the speech –, we have an ideological production. The social status of women in modern society is not exclusively derived from its physical/organic constitution and this is true, but is false from there to deny its existence or relation to this process. Obviously this will be the starting point for other ideologies even more misleading and bordering the absurd[2]. The criticism of biologism, with regard to women's issues, moreover, is nothing new as it was born with Simone de Beauvoir (1978) in the 40s of the 20th Century and contemporary references add nothing and not go beyond the level presented by her, unless in a retrograde direction.

What she denounces in the other approaches is precisely what she does. She provides a universal causal explanation and held “reductive generalizations” and “overly simple”. The determinism of gender is an ideological creation not only simplistic, but dogmatic, as it does not question and reflect on its own fundamentals. It is a determinism and a reductionism. And it is nonetheless revealed the disregard of historical materialism or, as is common, reduce it to more simplistic and dogmatic formulations, ie exchange it for what it's called “vulgar Marxism”, far short of Marx.

However, the most problematic element of Scott's conception is in her pursuit of paradigmatic transformation, which is based on the idea that gender is the primary way to give meaning to the relations of power. The basis of such a theory is not held anywhere. References to Eve and Mary (Christian tradition), or any stereotype of women, outside the context in which it occurs, not establish nothing. The quotes of thinkers considered representatives of conservative thought, contrary to the French Revolution, as Burke, Bodin, among others, can not be generalized, if only because it is a critique of the Enlightenment and the bourgeois revolution of pre-bourgeois point of view. And it is nonetheless interesting as several women authors derive their ideas in the speeches of other women authors (or men authors, in rare cases) and not in concrete reality (Scott, 1986; Stolke, 2004; Butler, 2003). These conceptions are based on a unquestioned and unquestionable, that is, a dogma, which reveals a metaphysical abstraction and that does not explain anything. Taking the specific case of Scott, we have gender as “primary field” in which or through which “power is articulated”. In addition to the statement, no justification, other than a brief reference to the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The genre here is a priori unquestioned, a dogma, without any justification.

The term gender is a metaphysical abstraction when seeking to transform it from category to concept[3], and so loses all its value. And this is even more serious when one want to put it as the determination of power relations. Obviously, no substantiated reasons is given for such priority to “gender” while instituting concept of social reality and power relationships. The author is content to appeal to Bourdieu and his reflections. Bourdieu condemns the non-historicity (“naturalization”, that is, make natural, something that is history), and at the same time does it. This is due to the fact that he never performs an analysis of the concrete reality of capitalist society, but purely presents his metaphysical abstractions about symbolic power, accompanied by his empiricism or its ideology of “fields” which serves as a model to think the “masculine domination” (Bourdieu, 2002), an undue extrapolation. In Bourdieu's approach, the metaphysical abstraction meets the empirical that comes to confirm it, creating a dichotomous but homologous vision where isolated incidents of all serve as examples of metaphysical abstractions of symbolic violence and the like.

One can not think man (male gender) and women (female gender) as arbitrary cultural constructions. The representations, real or illusory, according to Marx (Marx and Engels, 1991), are given from concrete social relations. Everyday representations and ideologies about female gender (and male gender), are not arbitrary products of “culture” or “power”, these two metaphysical entities that dominate the anthropological contemporary discourse or post structuralist, whereas both culture and power of this ideology appears as something non-historical, indeterminate, asocial. The perception of the female gender consists historically and socially, but it's needed to discuss in which historical period and social context it occurs, as well as understand what is the class position of whom presents it. Let's see what Bourdieu says:

The divisions constitutive of the social order and, more precisely, the social relations of domination and exploitation that are instituted between the sexes thus progressively embed themselves in two different· classes of habitus, in the form of opposed and complementary bodily hexis and principles of vision and division which lead to the classifying of all the things of the world and all practices according to distinctions that are reducible to the male/female opposition. It falls to men, who belong on the side of all things external, official, public, straight, high and discontinuous, to perform all the brief, dangerous and spectacular acts which, like the sacrifice of the ox, ploughing or harvesting, not to mention murder or war, mark breaks in the ordinary course of life; women, by contrast, being on the side of things that are internal, damp, low, curved and continuous, are assigned all domestic labour, in other words the tasks that are private and hidden, even invisible or shameful, such as the care of the children or the animals, as well as all the external tasks that are attributed to them by mythic reason, that is to say, those that involve water, grass and other green vegetation (such as hoeing and gardening), milk and wood, and especially the dirtiest, most monotonous and menial tasks (Bourdieu, 2002, p. 30).

This quotation can be an example to analyze Bourdieu's procedure and its risks. First, we have a generalization: on one side “men”, on the other, “women”. Men, according to Bourdieu, are on the official side, of the right. All the men? The proletarians? The lumpen proletarians? The peasants? And women are all on the other side, thus there is no woman who holds power, that is in the state, etc. Women often are left with the dirty work, they take care of children. The women of the bourgeoisie do this? They do not hire other women to do it for them? In this approach, it seems like domestic workers work only for men, and the women of the bourgeoisie care for children, working in “monotonous and menial tasks”. We do not know which country and epoch refers Bourdieu. He refers to an abstract-metaphysical world that does not exist concretely. “Women”, in the plural and in general, has as task the “invisible, shameful” work, such as child care. Ora, Only from certain values that caring for children is "shameful", as well as other examples cited by Bourdieu, ie, humility, shame, etc., is not an attribute of activities but a valuation or devaluation of activities.[4]

In Bourdieu's analysis, phenomena such as social classes, values, capital accumulation, class struggle, etc., do not exist. The capitalist domination and the mercantile, competitive and bureaucratic world also do not exist in his approach. The “masculine domination” to Bourdieu has a structural homology to the various “camps” that he says exist in reality (artistic field, political field economic field scientific field etc.)[5] and so has the same fantastic isolation and similar logic, since Bourdieu was able to invent a “male illusio”[6]. But here doesn't fit a general critique of Bourdieu's sociology, that we'll do another time, but point out that his methodological procedure and his approach to the issue of women is tied to his abstract-metaphysical building, or ideological.

Thus, Scott complement to her analysis appealing to Bourdieu does not hold. But it is nonetheless interesting this appeal and how a metaphysical approach to the genre in Scott can be supplemented with other metaphysical approach, Bourdieu's approach. The rejection of all or reducing it to a sector of reality, arbitrarily chosen as “essential”, since there was no justification, is a post-structuralist procedure reproduced by Scott and by gender ideologues.

We can conclude this analysis of the construct gender putting his abstract-metaphysical character, coming from the culturalist fad derived from post-structuralism[7], just is a word used to uses and abuses, but that does not explain anything and does not lend itself to the struggle for social transformation because instead of unmasking power, hides. The gender construct is a unit of an ideological discourse. This ideological discourse or perform a fantastic isolation of relations between the sexes or considers such relations as founders of the social, or, as they say, power or, even, the power conceived metaphysically goes on to explain such relations. Thus, culture and power are transformed into metaphysical abstractions that come to explain and determine everything. In this last case, the indeterminate (culture, power) becomes the determinant of social relations, and this ideology that explains nothing becomes hegemonic in certain circles. In the first case, relations between the sexes (of “gender”) are determinant, though never substantiated the source of this determination. That's why the work of Bourdieu is well received by some of the genre ideologues, because the isolation of these relations is the same type as they do, however, much is talked about “culture” or “power”, always in an abstract way.

Another characteristic that reproduces the gender ideology is the lack of references to concrete human beings, concrete social relations. The books of the genre ideologues are full of references to other works, that is, we are in a bookish world in which a book refers to several other books (not for them extract concrete social relations, but only other theses), and a thesis refers to several other theories, a vicious and self-referential circle of ideological world. No doubt, there may be exceptions (Bourdieu does not enter in this group, for example, although his approach of concrete reality is fragmentary and reversed and he is not exactly one of the representatives of this trendency), but this is the rule of the gender ideologies.

But what is the source of Scott and gender ideologues? She herself reveals: “concern with gender as an analytic category has emerged only in the late twentieth century. It is absent from the major bodies of social theory articulated from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries” (Scott, 1986, p. 1066). The use of the word occurs in a particular historical context: “The term gender is part of the attempt by contemporary feminists to stake claim to a certain definitional ground, to insist on the inadequacy of existing bodies of theory for explaining persistente inequalities bewteen women and men” (Scott, 1986, p. 1066).

This mutation occurs in a “moment of great epistemological effervescence”:

In the space opened by this debate and on the side of the critique of Science developed by the humanities, and of empiricism and humanism by post-structuralists, feminists have not only begun to find a theoretical voice of their own but have found scholarly and political allies as well. It is within this space that we must articulate gender as an analytic category (Scott, 1986, p. 1066).

The date of the predecessor studies is the 60s, the time of the counterculture of the hippie movement, the feminist movement, of Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique, as well as the works of Kate Millet, Sexual Politics and Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, which already begin to use the term gender but without the subsequent connotation. It is from the cultural counter-revolution, Which began after the defeat of the student rebellion of May 1968 expressed in the post-avant-garde (art) and poststructuralism (science)[8], that begins the ideological production which will be the basis of gender ideologies, such as the work of Michel Foucault, the largest poststructuralist ideology in his “critical” tendency and the other representatives of this ideology (Guattari, Deleuze, etc.). The ideology of gender is strengthened and systematized in the 80s. The mutation begins at the 70s: “In an article in 1973 that documents the terminological change of sex to gender, Strathern anticipates his conception of gender as a symbolic system” (STOLKE, 2004, 91). In 1988, she launched a book which deepens her conception. But it is in the 80s that feminist analysis about gender relations is more sophisticate. With the emergence of neo-liberalism, poststructuralism becomes hegemonic and dominant and the gender ideology is one of its products.

The intellectual productions from the 70s called “postmodern” are actually reformed and depoliticized versions of critical trends of the 60s. The struggles of the end of the 60s (that ranges from the counterculture to the student and workers' struggles in Germany/France, and the workers' struggles in Italy, etc.) and critical intellectual production (Debord and the Situationist International, Henri Lefebvre, Marcuse, Sartre, etc.). Capitalism's mutation occurs from the 60s and is realized in the 80s, with the emergence of the full regime of accumulation (Viana, 2009; Viana, 201b), which means a cultural transformation that seeks to appropriate the previous oppositional culture to disarm it and cause it to lose strength and effect.

Poststructuralism has as its fundamental point the criticism of the approach of the whole, or, as says one of its main ideologues, of the “meta-narratives” (Lyotard, 1986) It is precisely this aspect that enables the non-politicisation or micro-reformism, depending on the approach. Some poststructuralist, when denying all, start to perform purely descriptive approaches (non-politicisation) of everyday elements and other reference to power, but purely in everyday scale, isolating the power relations in a certain place or social relationship and after this isolation, presents isolated fights and makes its praise, refusing all forms of articulation and expansion of the fight. This procedure is used initially by Foucault (1989) and Guattari (1981), and, afterwards is performed by gender ideologues, which create a set of constructs ahistorical and isolated, as the so-called “gender relations”, and address some social phenomena creating a small world reified that references to culture and power, but taken as metaphysical entities and solely linked to this reified world.

Gender ideology arises in this context. And nothing more revealing than the vicissitudes of feminists who have embraced this concept and elect power relations as a fundamental and at the same, time hide or are unaware that these relationships are products of this same reality and therefore power relations. The “masculine domination” revealed by Bourdieu is harmless against him, perhaps by reason of being a sociologist, an intellectual, although he says that intellectuals are a “dominated fraction of the dominant class” (Bourdieu, 1990). Joan Scott, Judith Butler and all others are above this “masculine” reality marked by “power relations” and they are female specimens, but do not suffer the determinations and oppression of other mortals. In a nutshell, the ideologues think they are as Baron of Munchausen and thus can be pulled by the hair and become immune to what exists (culture, power relations, phallogocentrism, male illusio, etc.). The references also have the same “immunity” and therefore Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, are the great inspirers of the new ideology.

Thus the archeology of the term genre is only a description of its uses, but never of its genesis and its relationship with the social and historical changes. And so once again, it reproduces the evolutionary and unilinear conception of development of human thought, which occurs since Comte and Hegel, and reaches today with "ingenuous" gender ideologues. The ideology has no independent history, stand-alone (Marx and Engels, 1991), except in the very ideological discourse, which reverses the reality and presents itself as a product of a breakthrough and improvement of the previous idea or as a false break with the predecessor conceptions, but always going towards the absolute truth.

Thus, the gender ideology is so dated historically and socially determined as any other ideology, and its ideological sources (poststructuralism) as its content, demonstrate the limits of such approach, revealing only another form of false consciousness systematized.

References

Beauvoir, Simone 1978. O Segundo Sexo. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1996. As Regras da Arte. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996.

Bourdieu, Pierre 2002. Maculine Domination. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Butler, Judith 2003. Problemas de Gênero. Feminismo e Subversão da Identidade. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2003.

Eagleton, Terry 1998. As Ilusões do Pós-Modernismo. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.

Foucault 1989, Michel. Microfísica do Poder. 8ª edition, Rio de Janeiro: Graal.

Guattari, Félix 1981. Revolução Molecular: Pulsações Políticas do Desejo. São Paulo: Brasiliense.

Lyotard, Jean-François 1986. O Pós-Moderno. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1986.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich 1982. A Ideologia Alemã (Feuerbach). 3^a edition, São Paulo: Lech.

Scott, Joan 1986. Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis. The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5. (Dec., 1986), pp. 1053-1075.

Stolke, Verena 2004. La Mujer es Puro Cuento: La Cultura del Género. Estudos Feministas. Vol. 12, n^o 02. may/aug. 2004.

Viana, Nildo 2007. A Consciência da História. Ensaios Sobre o Materialismo Histórico-Dialético. 2ª edition, Rio de Janeiro: Achiamé.

Viana, Nildo 2008. Os Valores na Sociedade Moderna. Brasília: Thesaurus.

Viana, Nildo 2009. O Capitalismo na Era da Acumulação Integral. São Paulo: Ideias e Letras.

Viana, Nildo 2015a. As Esferas Sociais. A Constituição Capitalista da Divisão do Trabalho Intelectual. Rio de Janeiro: Rizoma.

Viana, Nildo 2015b. Estado, Democracia e Cidadania. A Dinâmica da Política Institucional no Capitalismo. 2ª edition, Rio de Janeiro: Rizoma.

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[1] A constructor is a false concept, and this is a correct expression of reality, while that is its distorted expression. See in Viana, 2007.

[2] The most explicit example of this ideological exasperation is Butler's thesis (2003), according to which sex is an effect of gender and society is based on “compulsory heterosexuality”. That is, the determinant is the genre (cultural building) and not sex (organism) and the dominant sexual practices, heterosexuality, is compulsory, product of power relations, according to his inspiration in Foucault. This hyper culturalist thesis does not realize that cancels itself and falls into many contradictions. If it's the genre that produces sex (“woman has no sex”, according to the epigraph of Irigaray used by Butler) then it is merely a cultural construction. So what’s the problem? In what a cultural construction is better than the other? The answer is provided in the second thesis, the thesis of “compulsory heterosexuality” (not to mention the “phallocentrism”...). If heterosexuality is compulsory, then people are forced to be heterosexual, which means they are not naturally so. But if they are forced to be heterosexuals then it is because they are naturally homosexuals... an inversion (gender determines sex) is complemented by other (normal and natural is homosexuality...). This conception, besides having no basis in concrete reality, ends up falling into essentialism and biologism that it intended to fight (Only reverses/exchange heterosexual by homosexual essence and the sole basis for such essentialism can only be biological... After all, for what reason, other than biological, people would naturally be homosexual?).

[3] A category is a resource without mental existence in the concrete reality, while a concept is an expression of reality therefore has concreteness. The expression "gender", as relationship, cause, effect, space, right, left, etc., falls within the first type, and to move to the second type must have an increase of something real, concrete (Viana, 2007).

[4] About the values and process valuation and its social character, check Viana, 2008.

[5] For a critical and distinct analysis of the analysis presented by Bourdieu about the fields, see Viana, 2015a.

[6] The illusio is an expression originally used by Bourdieu to portray the “art of fetishism”, in which agents of the artistic field endow value to works of art and transform them into fetishes (Bourdieu, 1996). It is a great extrapolation use this expression to speak of “masculine domination”.

[7] What we call post-structuralism is what is commonly called “postmodernism” and includes the group of emerging ideologies from the 1970s, and that became hegemonic in the following decades, including the most varied ideologies.

[8] Ideologically called “postmodernism”. A critique of the construct “postmodernism” and a comprehensive review of post-structuralism can be seen in Viana, 2009. Another criticism of post-structuralism can be seen in Eagleton, 1998.

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International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education (IJHSSE)

Volume 4, Issue 2, February 2017, PP 1-7

ISSN 2349-0373 (Print) & ISSN 2349-0381 (Online)

http://dx.doi.org/10.20431/2349-0381.0402001

www.arcjournals.org

https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijhsse/v4-i2/1.pdf 

KARL MARX: THEORY OF SELF-MANAGEMENT

KARL MARX: THEORY OF SELF-MANAGEMENT

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was born in Treves, town south of Rhenish Prussia, on the border of France, on 5 May 1818. The son of Herschel Marx, attorney and counselor of justice, Jewish descent, was persecuted by the government absolutist of Frederick William III. In 1835 he completed the junior high school at the Lyceum Friedrich Wilhelm. In the same year and much of 1836, Karl studied law, history, philosophy, art and literature at the University of Bonn.

At the end of 1836 goes to Berlin, where he spread the ideas of Hegel, German philosopher and idealist highlighted. Marx aligns with the "Left Hegelian" which seek to analyze social issues, based on the need for changes in the German bourgeoisie. Between 1838 and 1840, is dedicated to the preparation of his thesis, "The difference between the Philosophy of Nature in Democritus and Epicurus" (1841).

Marx is not accepted in universities and began to work as a journalist writing articles for publication excited for him and Arnold Ruge, the German Annals, but censorship prevents publication. In October 1842, he moved to Cologne, and became the director of the newspaper Gazeta Rhenish, but shortly after the publication of the article on the Russian absolutism, the government closed the newspaper. Is expelled from Germany and goes to France, with his wife Jenny and as Ruge founded the magazine "Annals Franco German", which publishes the Friedrich Engels articles. Marx published "Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" and "On the Jewish Question." Logo is expelled from France, and later in Belgium, ending up living in London, England. Participates in the foundation and organization of the IWA - International Workers Association. Passes a period of his life in poverty and survives of the few resources of their articles in newspapers and the help of friends and colleagues. In England, he published part of his great work, Capital.

Karl Heinrich Marx died in London on March 14, 1883, as a result of bronchitis and respiratory problems.

MAJOR WORKS self-managed

Marx had a critical perspective against the utopianism. Critical of utopian socialism, he preached a new company, but did not observe the ways and agents to its constitution concretely, calling for imaginative solutions such as "education", "reason", etc., he wrote little about the society future. Another reason to be cautious when it comes to discussing the future society, is due to its thesis that human emancipation occurs via proletarian revolution and it is the proletariat show concrete way of its realization. In this sense, he devoted most of his work to understand the history of mankind and especially modern society and class struggles that tend to engender communism. In this sense, it produced fundamental works as The German Ideology, Communist Manifesto, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Eighteenth Brumaire of, among others.

His greatest work was The Capital, which was incomplete. He, in life, just published volume 01 and the volumes 2 and 3 were published by Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky by 4. In this work, perhaps the most important of modern society, he deepened the analysis of the capitalist mode of production, showing the essence of exploitation of production employed by capital through the surplus value extraction, as well as the process of capitalist accumulation and trends .

So he wrote little about the future society, with excerpts and observations scattered several works, such as The German Ideology, Paris Manuscripts, Critique of the Gotha Program, The Capital, the Communist Manifesto, among several others, including letters and short texts. The two works in which more develops his analysis of communist society are The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Program. At first it looks at first self-managed experience of history, the Paris Commune, showing their self-managed character and its universal historical importance; the second criticizes the party nascent German social democratic program and observations about communism.

Marx did not use the term "self-management", which will only emerge in May 1968 in France, but used terms have the same meaning: communism, self-government of the producers, free association of producers.

The deformation of Marx's thought by pseudomarxismo and pseudocríticas and misguided criticism from political opponents served to create a dominant interpretation of his thought that links with its deformers (Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao Tse-tung, etc.), producers the pseudomarxismo with the state capitalism of the former USSR and the like (Cuba, China, Eastern Europe, Albania, etc.) and the "authoritarianism". This false and dominant interpretation only dims their struggle and contribution to the theory of social self-management, the deeper because by unless you have written about the future society, all made a deep analysis of capitalism and its trends, among others, that are fundamental to a theory of social self-management. The writings that makes references to communism, though few, are fundamental because they break with utopianism, such as pre-manufactured by ideologists and Utopians models, and highlight key elements, such as the need to think the agent of the revolution, the proletariat and their historical experiences, and be careful with the process of counterrevolution and its dangers and mechanisms to try to weaken this trend.

LINKS FOR BOOKS AND ARTICLES self-managed

MARX, KARL. The Civil War in France. Several editions.

MARX, KARL. Critique of the Gotha Program. Several editions.

See also: Recommended Reading and Texts for more bibliographical information from / on Marx and self-management.

http://autogestaosocial.blogspot.com.br/

http://marxismoautogestionario.blogspot.com.br/

Radicalism And Humanism

Radicalism And Humanism

Nildo Viana

Humans are capable of the most beautiful acts and speeches and at the same time, concepts and more ignoble attitudes. They can act with extreme grandeur and generosity on the one hand, and extreme smallness and meanness on the other. This process is of particular importance in the field of revolutionary militancy in which extremism is often confused with radicalism and when this occurs there is a confusion between being revolutionary and be bloody. Therefore it is important to discuss the relationship between humanism and radicalism, as a revolutionary individual must unite the two into one, which does not always happen and thinking about it may clarify and help overcome this dichotomy in some individual cases .

The goal of a revolutionary is obviously the revolution. Undoubtedly, you can not fall into the mistake of believing that everyone who is said to be the only revolutionary for having said such a thing. Not analyzing an individual by the consciousness that he has of himself, as Marx said (1983a). Not least because what is meant by "revolution" and "revolutionary" varies according to the people. A revolutionary in the sense used here which obviously excludes many cases is that individuals who aims at revolution and understand this as a process of human emancipation via emancipation of the workers, or more precisely, of the proletariat. So accordingly excludes those who think that a revolution is a seizure of state power, replacing a government, among other ways of thinking only in the sense of a "political revolution" because human emancipation can only occur through a revolution social, ie the radical transformation of all social relations. If the goal of the revolutionary is the revolution that liberates humanity as a whole, then there is a humanist basis that goal. There is therefore dichotomy between the radicalism of a revolutionary who wants a radical transformation of social relations to free human beings from exploitation, domination, oppression, and humanism. However, precisely this dichotomy often appears and that's what we have to reflect.

The word humanity can also be seen in various forms. It is not up here a conceptual discussion and not address all its manifestations, just expose the two basic forms of existing humanism. One is the romantic humanism, or "abstract", which, as Rousseau (1989), believes that man is "good by nature" and attributes this quality to all human beings without distinction, based on this principle. The human being here is a core value and this is positive, although problematic. To understand its problematic character it needs to move to the radical humanism, which is a concrete humanism.

As opposed to the abstract (in the metaphysical sense), concrete is "a result of their multiple determinations" (Marx, 1983a). In this conception, the human being is neither good nor bad by nature. What characterizes the human essence is work and sociability, as Marx already pointed (Marx, 1983b; Marx, 1988; Marx and Engels, 1991). The human being is active. He, unlike the other animals, acts on the world, transforms nature and humanizes her and himself. It does this in association or cooperation with other human beings, also being a social being. Thus, the conscious teleological work, praxis, and the association with other human beings are human needs, are part of its essence. However, with the emergence of class society, this essence is denied. Work and sociability are perverted, distorted. Work becomes alienated, directed by others, founding the exploitation and domination and sociability becomes, because of this conflict. In capitalism, more specifically, the operation at work and domination occurs through the extraction of surplus value and sociability shall be controlled, in addition to the conflict classes by competition. In this sense, class societies deny human nature and capitalist society leads to such extreme denial.

In these societies, and more broadly in capitalism, the human essence is denied and distorted. Monstrosities emerge from those practiced by individuals to the collective, as can illustrate the case of a psychopath, in the first case and Nazism in the second. So the romantic humanism is illusory. The radical humanism is one that does not ignore the history and the denial of human nature under capitalism, source of psychic imbalances, but also has no illusions with the world of appearance falling into anti-humanism, thinking that human beings are "selfish" by nature, understanding the broader social process based on class struggle. However, the radical humanism also does not confuse existence with essentially no illusions with "empirical" and knows that behind the psychic destruction of human beings and all other problems such as deformed values, reified consciousness, etc., the essence exists, stifled and repressed, but it's there. Everyone has psychic need for association with other human beings and fulfill their potential and if this does not materialize, there are effects, including the revolutionaries are products that. Revolutionaries are the individuals for expressing the desire of human emancipation, of others and of themselves, although many also know that may not live to see it. No doubt this is different from revolt or rebel. The first only dreams of outright destruction in the background do not want to change anything, just want to destroy what he identified as the cause of their ailments. The rebel is one who only asks what it achieves and instead of radically transforming social relations or, in the background, change its position within that society, so it is easily co-opted and corrupted.

Thus, the radical humanism maintains the unity between humanism and radicalism. As it was for Marx, "to be radical is to go to the root, and the root for man is man himself" (1977). Radicalism without direction there is pseudorradicalismo. It can not generate human liberation becoming inhuman. Humanism without radicalism is romanticism and the "radicalism" without humanism is inconsequential extremism. The romantic humanism generates reformism or sentimentality and extremism generates authoritarianism, morality, nihilism. For revolutionary praxis or abstract humanism or extremism are appropriate. Only the radical humanism is corresponding to such a practice. The radical humanism prevents naive actions derived from romantic humanism, such as thinking that a popular demonstration during radicalized social struggles can appeal to the kindness and non-violence of the repressive state apparatus (police, army). Likewise, also avoids the practice of the Jacobean terror. As Rosa Luxemburg put,

"The proletarian revolution does not need terror to achieve its goals, it hates and abhors the murder. It does not need these means of struggle because it does not combat individuals but institutions, because it does not enter the arena full of naive illusions that lost, would lead to a bloody revenge. It is not the desperate attempt of a minority to mold the world forcibly according to its ideal, but share the great mass of the millions of men of the people, called to fulfill its historic mission and to make the historical need a reality "( LUXEMBOURG, 1991, p. 103).

Accordingly, it can not fall into the romantic humanism misconceptions and derivatives (sentimentality, pacifism, reformism) nor the reckless extremism (authoritarianism, morality, nihilism, aggression or unnecessary violence), both in revolutionary moments as in periods of retreat the labor movement, these two types of action only hinder the advancement of the struggle for radical transformation of society. It is for this reason that both the romantic humanism as extremism must be overcome by radical humanism.

References

FROMM, Erich. The Dogma of Christ. 5th edition, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar 1986.

LUXEMBURG, Rosa. What Whether Spartacus League? In: LUXEMBURG, Rosa. The Russian Revolution. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1991.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. The German Ideology (Feuerbach). 3rd Edition, São Paulo, Hucitec 1991.

Marx, Karl. Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 2nd Edition, São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 1983a.

Marx, Karl. Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Introduction. Magazine Themes of Humanities. Sao Paulo, Grijalbo, vol. 2, 1977.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In: FROMM, E. The Marxist concept of man. 8th Edition, Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1983b.

Marx, Karl. The capital. Vol 1. 3rd Edition, São Paulo, New Culture, 1988.

ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men. Sao Paulo: Attica, 1989.

Who is Afraid of Utopia?

Who is Afraid of Utopia?

Nildo Viana

Socialism has often been labeled a utopia and that word is understood as synonymous with impossible dream. Now, with the crisis countries' so-called "socialist, has become" intellectual fashion "say that socialism and Marxism died and it is proven its utopian character. This is the dominant ideology but we should never forget that "the dominant ideas are the ideas of the ruling class" and that we must refute them.

Let us begin by the meaning given to the word utopia. To understand how "impossible dream", it becomes a weapon to discredit opponents of the current social system. In the French Revolution of 1789, the royalists have accused Republicans of "utopians", as this would be impossible dream. But in the meantime, the republic was established, this dream came true. Those who advocate the maintenance of the social system accuse the subversive and revolutionary ideas of being utopian. Auguste Comte criticizes the utopia in opposition to her reality. He considered it a 'metaphysical and irrational dream ", contrary to scientific knowledge. Such knowledge, however, is positivism, which takes reality as if she did not have contradictions and did not become, or are stuck in the cage of the "eternal present," ahistorical. Conservative thought that attacks the utopia can not see a foot in front of the nose, which is, for this thought, a "tangible reality"; is a prisoner thought into the gift and that can not exceed the limits of the here and now; is a thought without perspective and therefore no action and hence the pre-human attitude that outputs the existing without trying to overtake him.

But through a critical analysis we can say that the bulk of utopias can be found in the work of the structure The Utopia of Thomas More. In the first part of this book, he criticizes the society of his time and the second describes the island of Utopia, which has a "perfect" social organization. It is seen in the first part, for example, a criticism of enclosures (enclosures) in England and in the second part describes a society without private property and without social division of labor. Even if there were the first part of the work, as in many other utopias, would be implicit criticism of such a society that lived with private property, the social division of labor, etc. In the case of Morus, criticism is explicit, as noted in comparison he made between work in Utopia and of English society, as in Utopia does not work as a "workhorse" from "dawn to night ", which would be worse than the" torture and slavery ", although this is in" another part "a" sad fate of the workers. " Utopia means, then, a critique of existing society and a proposal for a new society. Every criticism of the existing brings itself, implicitly, a proposal for a new society and every proposal for a new society brings out in a critique of existing society.

Western Marxist Ernst Bloch classifies utopias into two main types: the abstract and the concrete. From this we can say that Morus, Campanella, among others, produced abstract utopias, because, despite having a review and an "alternative" to the existing society, they had very limited criticism and projects that often catered to the whims of some individuals or small social groups rather than the interests of the community. Their alternative society proposals It clashed with their actual possibility of implementation at the time they were written. But the major flaw of abstract utopias and characterizing them, according to Bloch, is that they do not present as is the case of this company for future society.

Another type of abstract utopia is produced by the utopian socialists. They did a more thorough critique of capitalism and, despite the shortcomings, this was his most revolutionary aspect. They also proposed to build new companies but the advance from earlier utopias is that the critique of capitalism has become better grounded and also began to deal with the transition from one society to another. However, the utopian socialists understand that the transition to "socialism" would take place with the support of the State or the "educated classes" or even by "education", the "awareness" and "reason". Here is revealed the main limitation of utopian socialism.

The other type of utopia, concrete, is based, as Bloch said, the perception of really possible, as opposed to the abstract utopias. In this sense, Marxism is a concrete utopia. When operating the critique of bourgeois society, Marx and Engels analyzed the historical possibilities of establishment of socialism and how it would happen. The concrete utopia is revolutionary theory that is not only possible and necessary as its implementation is the likely outcome of the historical process.

The crisis of state capitalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe makes the radicalized and intellectualized fraction of our helper classes of the bourgeoisie resume pre-Marxist ideas and goes on to consider Marxism as something "outdated". Without the crutch that was the USSR and Eastern Europe, the auxiliary classes of the bourgeoisie do not take that "support" to continue their "heroic struggle" for "socialism." This is where Marxists and ex-Marxists begin to qualify Marx as an idealist. As said Claude Lefort, among others, the idea of ​​a classless society is only an ideal created by Marx. The ideal floor for many, is synonymous with utopia. Both concepts in this case are understood as a proposal that does not take into account the possibilities of its realization. In a dialectical analysis we can say that the reality of modern societies is dominated by exploitation, oppression and alienation. This reality contradicts human aspirations become undesirable and view it this way produces the will to create a humane society. The "ideal" does not arise arbitrarily, but the real need. However, because the real is in motion and the ideal that emerges from it is also on the move, seeking to overcome them and the real, we can say that is the real with the possible paths that can go that creates the ideal and this or stands for and reinforces one of these paths or arises from these paths and becomes pure "abstraction." Therefore, this "ideal" is not a simple creation "arbitrary and illusory", but the real denial.

From this we can say that Marx was not the idealistic philosophical sense of the word but was idealistic from the common notion that attaches to this word the position of a person who has a dream. However, Marx was not an idealist as Morus and Campanella. In this case it comes to the same distinction between abstract and concrete utopia utopia presented above. Marx was not an abstract ideal but a concrete ideal and not make such a distinction is the same as working with the conservative propaganda, many "Marxists" are doing after the state of crisis of capitalism ("socialism").

Let's see if the Marxist utopia is concrete or not. There is the "Marxism" two positions on the establishment of socialism: the economist and idealistic (in the philosophical sense of the word). The economistic position generates two other locations: the reformist and catastrophic. The reformist position conceives the economic development of capitalism leads to its own resilience and so it is possible to pass to socialism gradually gaining ground in Parliament and in the state and go from this building socialism. This is the proposal of evolutionary socialism of Kautsky and his followers. The catastrophic position conceive that there will be a "final crisis of capitalism" and therefore should prepare a class party that will take power with the rise of the famous "final crisis". This is the proposal of Amadeo Bordiga.

The idealistic position also generates two other locations: the avant-garde revolutionary spirit and the avant-garde reformism. Fans of avant-garde revolutionary spirit conceive that the "objective conditions" of the socialist revolution are ripe, and what is lacking are the "subjective conditions" that will be created by the "Party of Vanguard" due to the working class inability spontaneously acquire your conscience class. It is the party, through its intellectuals, working out socialist consciousness and introduce the proletariat and therefore has the "historical right" to direct it towards the conquest of state power. In this case is not a class, but the party is the revolutionary subject. This is the proposal of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Others, the avant-garde reformist, say the bourgeois ideology dominates the whole society, including the "lower classes", then it is up to the intellectuals of the party draw up a new "world view", "new values", etc., and thereby unify such classes and promote a cultural change and so gain hegemony, required the implementation of socialism. This and the proposal of some "interpreters" of Gramsci.

But these positions are compatible with Marx? According to Marx, communism is not an ideal (abstract) but a real movement which abolishes the present state of things. Actual assumptions are universal development of productive forces and the emergence of a mass of humanity devoid of property at odds with a world of existing wealth and culture produced by the very development of the productive forces. In other words, the assumptions are: the formation of capitalism and the proletariat and, through capitalist development, the creation of a world market. Capitalism creates to develop and strengthen its own negation: the proletariat. Thereafter socialism becomes a historical trend.

From this, we can say that capitalism is abolished by capitalist development and thus creates communism. However, the creation of communism is the work of the working class. The first statement without the second takes into account only a metaphysical development of the productive forces to the detriment of the class struggle and social classes that would be, in this analysis, passive. Communism does not arise "economically" within capitalism, ie capitalism, of course, does not create collective ownership inside. Capitalism does not create communism directly but creates the proletariat which is the constitution of communism agent. Capitalism destroys itself but that does not mean that the result of its destruction is socialism. Bukharin had already noticed that might arise a post-capitalist society and non-socialist and this would be the result of development of productive forces and Marx said that there could be a positive abolition of private property (bourgeois), which means that there could be, too, a negative abolition. Marx's method is, as noted Bloch, a "science of the trend" and not a pure and simple economic determinism. Socialism is a need of humanity and a historical trend. Therefore, it is not "inevitable", ie is not the only historical possibility, although it is the most likely.

The Bordigist theory states that it is the party that holds the revolution is not true. As I said Otto Rühle, "the revolution is not party affair". The proletarian revolution can only be made by the class and the parties can even make "revolutions" or counter-revolutions, but can not make the communist revolution. Also, it does not justify the mechanistic theory of waiting the "final crisis of capitalism", because, as already noted Marx, revolutions can be anticipated.

Engels, in criticizing the utopian socialists, said that his main problem was not based on labor movement. These, according to Marx and Engels, came at a time when the proletariat was in training and therefore "the historical activity replace your own imagination, the historical emancipatory conditions, fantastic conditions, and the spontaneous and gradual organization of the proletariat in class social organization prefabricated for them. In his view, the story of the future is summarized in advertising and in the achievement of their social organization plans ".

This position would be taken up by Lenin in Tsarist Russia with its proletariat in formation. Bolshevism is an ideological expression of the backwardness of tsarist Russia. Social organization prefabricated by Lenin, the vanguard party, has its justification in the "vanguard ideology," according to which class consciousness does not arise spontaneously in the proletariat but only through bourgeois intellectuals gathered in the party. This thesis was supported philosophically by Georg Lukacs who said the passage of the proletariat "class in itself" to "class for itself" is mediated by the party, which is where intellectuals are. These, to discover the proletarian class interests, attributes his conscience that should have their interests, that is, the proletarian class consciousness is a consciousness attributed to him by the intellectuals. But leaving aside the "metaphysical phraseology" of Lukács and Lenin, let us see what Marx says, "economic conditions initially transformed the mass of the country workers. The domination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass therefore is already in view of the capital, a class, but still it is not for herself. In the fight that pointed out some phases, this mass comes together, constitutes class for itself. The particular interests become class interests. " Therefore, the proletariat acquire class consciousness (passes or class in itself to class for itself) through the class struggle, ie without party mediation or intellectuals. You can only choose: Marx or Lenin?

Today it has become common to many "Marxists" and former "Marxists" focuses on awareness and changing values. Some far right, who claim to represent a "new left", launch their appeals "cultural" for the conquest of hegemony from all social classes, since they overcame the "proletarian myth." This is a beautiful return to pre-Marxist socialism based on an abstract humanism that neither the so-called "young Marx" agreed. But if such arguments were normal at the time of the utopian socialists, given the degree of development of the proletariat, are today more than outdated and are an expression of the crisis of conscience auxiliary classes of the bourgeoisie and do not serve the struggle for socialism. Either way, favoring awareness and changing values ​​in a position to the right or to the left, is a epistemologically idealistic stance that generates an elitist political practice, since they are the intellectuals of the "new" left that will educate the "world ignorant "and do it, as Marx said, open your mouth and swallow the" roast duck absolute knowledge ".

All these positions have in common, apart from positivism, the denial of the revolutionary role of the proletariat. This is "passive" and only comes into play when it is called by Kautsky to vote on them, when the Bolshevik vanguard drives you and gives the socialist consciousness or are made aware by "would-be reformers of the world" (Marx). If Marx were alive and their "followers" were just these certainly would resume Heine metaphor: "My evil was sown dragons and have reaped only fleas."

The creation of communism is the work of the working class, then it is the historical experience of the labor movement we can find out how this will happen. The socialist theory justifies its name is based on the real movement of workers. Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, proposed the nationalization of the means of production under control of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, but after working experience in the Paris Commune, they turned back and said they did not just win the state power and use it according to their interests, it is necessary to destroy it and replace it with the "self-management of producers." After Marx, was Rosa Luxemburg who was based in the real labor movement to develop its revolutionary theory. Rosa Luxemburg when observing the explosion of mass strikes in several countries and especially in Czarist Russia, set them as the most powerful political weapon of the proletariat. The considered "anarchist theory" was taken up by Rosa Luxemburg as a universal force of workers' struggle. The strikes began to be advocated by Bernstein, but only to serve the parliamentary struggle of the German Social Democracy and Kautsky and Trotsky soon abandoned this position, the first to take on their reformism and the second to join the Bolshevism. After Rosa Luxemburg, fell to the ground councilists communist revolutionary theory in the labor movement. The Russian Revolution, the German Revolution, among other attempts at proletarian revolution in the early 20th century, were the scene of mass strikes that led to the workers' councils and were theorists such as Karl Korsch, Anton Pannekoek, Hermann Gorter, Helmutt Wagner, Paul Mattick, Otto Rühle, among others, who have taken this experience of workers - workers' councils - as a form of revolutionary organization of the proletariat. Pannekoek said at the time of Marx and Engels there was the possibility to predict clearly how the proletariat would take power and the old state power, the revolutionary process, would be destroyed and replaced by workers' councils. Without forgetting the most recent contributions and new issues arising from the historical development, we can say that these are the theoretical principal of the proletarian revolution and also that they are opposed to both social democracy and Bolshevism, which, as it was for the Marxist historian Arthur Rosenberg, have nothing to do with the labor movement.

But today tell us that all this is utopia. Who say that are those who have "committed to the existing society." It is these who are afraid of utopia and we know very well that no one fears "unrealistic dreams". Nothing is more ridiculous to say that the historical changes in Eastern Europe show that there will be no historical changes. The ideologues of the ruling class are so competent in reversing the reality using the very historical movement to say that it does not exist. However, the most curious of all is that those who until recently called themselves "defenders of workers" now take a conservative speech on behalf of "political realism". Communism went to these, capitalism denying to just a "patch" of this.

The formula "democratic socialism" is a beautiful example of this. Socialism, by nature, is democratic and genuine democracy can only exist in socialism, that is, such an expression is a contradiction. They tell us that democratic socialism will state planning living with the laws of the market and also with small and medium property. What is this socialism? Let's look first to what sectors of society such social project benefits: state planning serves the interests of the bureaucracy and the small and medium property serves the interests of small and medium bourgeoisie. Now let's see what happens with its historic extension: any economist knows that small and medium property living with the "market forces" soon become large properties, meaning there is a return to previous situation. For workers such proposal waves only with the "redistribution of income", ie, the decrease in the rate of exploitation and not its abolition. This proposal aims to build actually a reformed capitalism and not the communist mode of production.

Communism is not income redistribution, but a mode of production in which workers collectively drive the means of production implanting communist relations of production, for the redistribution of income can be redone again and against the workers if they do not detain the property and direction of the means of production. It is the mode of production which determines the distribution and this is why, among other reasons, that communism is based on production. The concept of "democratic socialism" only attacks the surface issues of capitalism and not the essential. Remains commodity production, the law of value, private property, social classes, wage labor, the more value, the state, etc., and consequently the exploitation, oppression and alienation. The "democratic socialism" of socialism in name only. Under the guise of political realism, cling to positivism and reformism. But in contrast there is the utopia with its critical-revolutionary character denying political realism and its inherent conservatism.

Communism is the socialization of the means of production based on social ownership. Paul Mattick was right when he said that "nothing proves more forcefully the revolutionary character of Marx's theories than the difficulty of ensuring its continued non-revolutionary periods." The overcoming of capitalism movement of communism becomes just a name that justifies even the permanence of bourgeois society, now reformed. Though they say that Marxism died, the trend is the rise of the revolutionary movement and consequently of Marxism. The working class will go your way and let others babble.

Article originally published in: Journal Brazil. Revolutionary. Year 2, n. 7, December 1990.

ANT: SELF-ORGANIZATION OF WORKERS SELF-MANAGED

The ANT - National Association of Workers of self-management trend, has just been founded in Brazil. The ANT is posited as not being a trade union, party or bureaucratic organization, not being a supposedly entity "representative" of workers. It arises as the self-organization of revolutionaries and self-managed workers who seeks to express the interests of the revolutionary proletariat and advance in the struggle for proletarian hegemony.

See more at: http://ant-luta.blogspot.com.br/

The ideology of gender is not Marxist

The ideology of gender is not Marxist

Nildo Viana

Reading the latest issue of the Journal Option, I came across the priest's text Luiz Carlos Lodi regarding the gender ideology. The author aims to question this ideology and makes a number of statements that would like to comment.

The first point I would highlight is the claim that such an ideology has "Marxist origin." I will have, due to reasons of space, to be very brief about the origins of this ideology. For further insight into just consult my article "Gender and Ideology" in the collection The Women's Issues (Rio de Janeiro, Modern Science, 2006). Marxism exerted a strong influence on feminism of the 60s, but loses such influence over the next decade. From the 70 post-structuralism arises (better known as "postmodernism") that passes, gradually gaining ground and become hegemonic, presenting itself as the overcoming of Marxism - the new big opponent of this theory which replaces former adversaries defeated by Marxism after the social struggles of the late '60s, structuralism, which was functionalism substitute.

The new feminism reference hegemonic speaking, becomes the post-structuralism, and the emergence of gender ideology is precisely in the 70s and is strengthened in the 80s, when the post-structuralism wins global force. The ideology of gender thus born in opposition to Marxism, particularly to replace the question of social classes by gender issues, replacing a social theory by a culturalist ideology.

To say that the origin of gender ideology is Marxist, or say that it is a Marxist character, is a misnomer, as the fundamental principle of Marxism, class struggle, is replaced by a fanciful "struggle of genres." Another radical difference between gender ideology and Marxism is epistemological, because for Marxism, the entire category is fundamental and one can only understand a social phenomenon in the set of social relationships, while the gender ideology, following the fashion poststructuralist, abandons the vision of totality, empowering and essentializing the "gender relations". The issue of women in the Marxist approach, is involved in the set of social relations and can not leave the issue of corporeality to analyze the relationships between the sexes.

The existence of some similarities between this design and Marxism does not make it a Marxist conception. This is not a commendable method or effective to understand the historical development (or cultural) of humanity, for the same procedure could be used and see similarities between Nazism and Christianity, or between fascism and contemporary feminism, and assert that Nazism has Christian origin and contemporary feminism has fascist origin, which only very irresponsible and decontextualisation could be stated. Undoubtedly, one can find some similarities between the gender ideology and Marxism, and note that there are some feminists who seek to join the two conceptions. However, if a notebook has leaves and a tree as well, this does not cause the tree to be a notebook or vice versa, even because they are "different" sheets.

On practical proposals derived from gender ideology, we note that they derive the culturalism that is at its base. On the one hand we have the conception of the question of the woman who is "naturalizing", biologist, which is typical of conservative view, on the other hand we have the gender ideology, where everything turns into "cultural construction". This ideology, as in more extreme view of Judith Butler, it generates a reversal of the traditional view and reaches the absurd to say that heterosexuality is compulsory and that sex (embodiment) is constructed by gender. Now the view that gender roles are socially constituted was produced by sociology and anthropology, as well as the critique of biological determinism on the issue of relations between the sexes was effected pioneered by Simone de Beauvoir in the 40 Not to mention the Marxism and various currents of psychoanalysis.

Accept and naturalize "the woman's place is at home" is not only a great conservatism but also a pre-scientific position and pre-Marxist. Extreme (and error) that is opposite unlink "gender" and sex means nothing more than abolish a part of concrete reality to defend their interests, or to stay "fashionable", which is a form of interest, since linking with the fad allows "competitive academic advantage."

So we must question not only the post-structuralist theories, as the revived conservatism (and manifesting in various forms, including in the form of religious fundamentalism) in contemporary society.

NILDO VIANA is professor of UEG and a doctorate in sociology from UNB.

Self-Managed Marxists 03: Maurício Tragtenberg

Mauricio Tragtenberg (city of Getulio Vargas, November 4, 1929 - São Paulo, November 17, 1998) was a sociologist and professor.

BIOGRAPHY

Tragtenberg was born in Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state, and moved to São Paulo, where he began his political activities, and later academic. As he had not completed the regular school and his university entrance was through the production of test planning - Challenge of the twentieth century, which was later turned into a book. With the acceptance of the text by the University, is qualified to provide the entrance exam. Okay, you get to attend the course of Social Sciences. A year later paid back entrance exam - this time for the course of history, he said. During the military dictatorship wrote his doctoral thesis in Politics, also from USP. And he began to devote himself to teaching career, teaching at undergraduate and graduate universities such as PUC-SP, USP, UNICAMP and "Getulio Vargas Fundation" (FGV).

In academia, Tragtenberg became known as a self-taught. He called himself "a kind of anarchistic Marxist". Irreverent with respect to the symbols and the antics of the authoritarian power, was an independent and critical intellectual in relation to the academic bureaucracy, he despised.

Chain smoker, his classes were attended not only by regular students but also by many not registered listeners. For his rebellious spirit and sense of often sarcastic humor, but above all by his profound generosity intelectual.A compulsion by the written word plus the facility to store names and quotations, made him be remembered for an encyclopedic knowledge.

PUBLICATIONS

Left at least eight published books and numerous articles in newspapers and general circulation magazines in the country, covering a range of issues such as education, politics, sociology, history and administration.

He wrote for several years in the column to stop the newspaper Popular News, a popular tabloid São Paulo.

His complete works including books, articles, presentations, prefaces and sparse text is being published by Editora UNESP, has been published four volumes of the collection Maurice Tragtenberg - led by Evaldo Amaro Vieira: Administration, Power and Ideology, On education, politics and unionism "Bureaucracy and Ideology" and the more recent the Russian Revolution.

BOOKS

• Planificação: Desafio do século XX, de 1967
• Burocracia e ideologia, de 1974
• Administração, poder e ideologia, de 1980
• Reflexões sobre o Socialismo, de 1986
• A Revolução Russa, de 1988
• Memórias de um autodidata no Brasil, 1999