Reading Monique Wittig and Transgender Marxism underscores that Marx’s writings, standing alone, do not properly address sex and gender. For this reason, it is essential that we read Marx through the lens of Wittig’s version of feminist materialism and an abolitionist version of transgender Marxism. Ultimately, if one embraces Marx’s abolitionist position with regard to private property, capital, and class, the resulting vision of society, of solidarity, and of cooperation requires the end of any forms of dominance associated with the category of sex. The abolition of class distinctions calls for the abolition of gender distinctions that create relations of domination. In effect, maintaining the idea of sexual difference undermines the possibility of a genuinely classless society. [Continue reading here…]
Abolition
By Bernard E. Harcourt Marx’s articles titled “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood,” published in the Rheinische Zeitung in October and November 1842, were fetish texts among critical legal scholars, critical sociologists, Marxist historians, and radical lawyers during the late 1960s and 70s.[1] The articles do not typically appear in the canon of Marx’s political writings. They are absent, for instance, from the classic, exhaustive, American compendium, The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker—that thick red volume that every undergraduate in social studies carries with them. They are considered by some, following Louis Althusser, as still tainted […]
On the evening of Thursday, January 25, 2024, the State of Alabama strapped a man, Kenneth Smith, to its execution gurney, placed a mask over his face, and pumped nitrogen gas hoping to asphyxiate him quickly. It was an execution method never used before in human history. Steve Marshall, the Alabama Attorney General, promised that Mr. Smith would be unconscious within seconds. What the media witnesses and others, including Mr. Smith’s family and Elizabeth Sennett’s sons, watched was very different—a far cry from the peaceful and dignified passing that Marshall presented to the Supreme Court and the public. It was another botched execution in Alabama: Mr. Smith remained conscious for many minutes after the nitrogen gas started flowing, struggled and writhed on the gurney, convulsed, dry heaved and retched into his mask, gasped for breath, and was finally pronounced dead 22 minutes later. [Continue reading here…]