Author of 'The Roots of Lesbian & Gay Oppression'
The antidote to racism and anti-LGBT oppression
Bob McCubbin, author of the germinal work, "The Roots of
Lesbian and Gay Oppression," published in 1976 by World View,
was invited to speak at a June 7 forum of People of Color in
Crisis, a community-based service organization for gay men of
color in Brooklyn, N.Y. His booklet, the first Marxist analysis
of the origins of sexual oppression, was groundbreaking for the
lesbian and gay as well as the Marxist movements. The following
are excerpts from his talk.
In 1963, before I had become an activist, I
avidly followed the nationwide struggle against racial
segregation and for civil rights for Black Americans. I already
disliked both the Democratic and the Republican parties. I
still, however, held out hope that there might be someone in
the Democratic Party who was sincerely committed to the goal of
racial justice.
In August of that year, I had the good fortune to attend the
historic civil rights gathering in Washington, D.C., where the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his great dream. I was
tremendously inspired, both by the size of the demonstration
and by Dr. King's words. But I noted with anger that John F.
Kennedy did not deign to attend or even acknowledge the
importance of that pivotal event in the city where he resided.
My alienation from the U.S. Establishment--from what I have
since come to understand is the U.S. ruling class-- was, from
that time on, complete and final. I have never since looked to
them for solutions for any of the increasingly grave social
illnesses that plague this country.
I joined Workers World Party in 1967. Workers World had an
explanation for Kennedy's absence I didn't hear anywhere else:
The interests of the rich are fundamentally opposed to the
interests of the working class and oppressed peoples. And so I
began to understand that racism isn't just some defect in the
socialization process. It is a conscious strategy promoted in a
thousand different ways by the powerful to protect their
privileged status in capitalist society.
At the time I joined Workers World, the Black Panthers were,
on the domestic front, scaring the ruling class half to death.
And they were at the same time inspiring millions of Black
people and others all over this country to believe that real
change in the deplorable conditions of their lives was
possible. The Vietnamese people were proving that "The Man's"
technology--the overwhelming military superiority of the
Pentagon--was no match for a united people fighting for their
freedom and independence.
I became a full-time organizer for the Party's youth group
at that time, Youth Against War & Fascism, and I began
studying the Marxist classics.
Try, if you can, to put aside for a minute the many negative
references to Marxism you've probably heard. Let me offer two
complementary definitions of Marxism.
First, Marxism is the science of human society and human
social development.
Second, in a complementary way, Marxism is a guide to
revolutionary action against social injustice.
Karl Marx spent his life fighting for social justice. He
spent his life in poverty and he spent it talking to workers
about their historic role as the gravediggers of capitalism and
the birthmothers of socialism. He used his genius to expose the
dynamics of the economic system that now dominates the globe.
It is a system based on greed and theft. He showed that working
people produce all the wealth of the world. And he showed how
the capitalists expropriate most of this wealth for
themselves.
He showed how change arises on the basis of struggle, social
change on the basis of the class struggle. His predictions are
firmly rooted in scientific investigation and analysis. The
power of his ideas is confirmed by the fact that the most
widely read book in human history is not the Bible, but rather
the Communist Manifesto.
There is much more than this to be said about Marxism. It is
a large and impressive body of information, analysis and
theory. But I'm going to have to leave it to your own curiosity
and initiative to explore.
One book that particularly caught my eye was Frederick
Engels' "Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the
State." In this work, Engels demonstrated how the world
historic oppression of women developed. He based his arguments
on what anthropological information was available at the time.
Another hundred-plus years of anthropological research since
the publication of this book have only strengthened his
findings.
In brief, Engels showed that women have not always been
oppressed. In communal societies--that is to say, in the human
groupings based on cooperation and sharing that existed for
hundreds of thousands of years before society began to divide
into economic classes of rich and poor--women were highly
respected, held leadership positions, and introduced many
technological innovations, such as the domestication of small
animals and the cultivation of plants. And of course their role
in the production of new human life positioned them at the very
center of human society.
Engels showed how, as human control over nature increased,
so did surplus resources and the issue of ownership of them
resulted in the division of society into classes and the
overthrow of matrilineal societies. With the introduction of
private ownership of material resources, women themselves came
to be viewed as property. Their loss of equal rights and
consequent inferior social status is thus directly attributable
to the introduction of private property and is another
important reason for us to fight for socialism, for an economic
system based on human needs and sharing rather than competition
and private profit.
I was, of course, against the oppression of women and very
happy to have scientific proof that their oppression by men was
not some immutable aspect of our species or some unchangeable
part of men's genetic makeup. But there was another, secret
reason for my excitement.
If women's oppression could be explained scientifically on
the basis of Marxist historical analysis, wasn't it possible
that so too could the oppression of lesbians and gay men?
'Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression'
I was still in the closet, but news of the Stonewall
Rebellion, the historic uprising of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender people in Greenwich Village in 1969, forced me to
face the fact that I was avoiding an issue of paramount
importance to my life, that is, my sexuality. Inspired by the
new Gay Liberation Movement, I did find the courage to come
out, six months after the Stonewall Rebellion. Then I quickly
plunged into a search for material that would provide a
historical explanation of our oppression. The booklet, "The
Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression," was the result, six years
later.
But it's important to explain that this work was not, by any
means, a solitary effort. My allies and collaborators in the
struggle to develop an objective analysis of the basis of our
oppression were really all my comrades. When, in 1971, I called
a meeting for comrades interested in working on this issue,
more than 50 responded immediately. The effort to develop a
Marxist analysis of the issue as well as to reach out a hand of
solidarity to the gay liberation movement of that time became a
party-wide task.
Today there are bookstores full of books addressing every
aspect of LGBT experiences. Back then there was very little. I
gathered what I could find, followed leads offered by others,
and after four and a half years of collecting material, sat
down to write.
If we were to rewrite the book today, we could include much
more evidence to support our point of view. For example, there
is much more information available now on the way humans lived
in the long period of communal society preceding the
development of class society. If women during this period were
highly respected and held positions of leadership--and the
evidence is overwhelming that they did--LGBT people were
similarly respected and honored for their special
contributions.
It must be admitted that our evidence is indirect, even if
persuasive. The invention of writing and the habit of keeping
records came only with the introduction of private property and
the development of class society. Much of what we've learned
about how our pre-class ancestors lived is from the reports of
anthropologists, explorers and missionaries who spent time in
areas of the world where communal and semi-communal societies
survived as the world came to be dominated by class-based
societies. And much of this evidence is tainted by the
prejudices of the observers.
Nevertheless, it is very clear from the large body of
subsequent information now available that gender-variant people
and homosexually oriented people existed in all communal
societies and were most often specially valued and esteemed
members and also leaders of these communities.
A remarkable study by an openly gay white anthropologist is
Walter Williams' book-length report on these Two-Spirit Native
people titled, "The Spirit and the Flesh" (Beacon Press, 1986).
His book is a lengthy and detailed report of what he discovered
by living with various indigenous peoples in widely scattered
areas of the Americas. His research focused especially on
Native groupings in the midwestern, western and southwestern
U.S. and in Yucatan, Mexico.
The same year, Paula Gunn Allen, a Laguna Pueblo/Sioux
Indian, published "The Sacred Hoop" (Beacon Press), which
explored the honored role of lesbians in Native societies.
Gay American Indians published an anthology titled "Living
the Spirit" (St. Martin's Press, 1988) that documented
alternative sex/gender roles in 133 Native nations on the North
American continent.
These and other truly remarkable findings with regard to the
social roles of sexually and gender variant people bolster the
generalizations we made in the Roots booklet. And they are in
harmony with historian/author and WWP member Leslie Feinberg's
conclusions regarding the roots of the oppression of
transgender, transsexual and intersexual people.
We Marxists think that it will only be when we rid human
society of all the social, political, and economic inequalities
and restraints, all the prejudices and repression, that is to
say, when we are freed from the oppressive dictatorship of the
capitalist class, that human sexual and gender expression will
once again be free.
The final issue I was asked to address is the role, if any,
that white LGBT people can play as allies in the struggle for
Black gay liberation.
As a socialist, I am keenly aware that the struggle for
socialism will only be won with the intervention of a united
working class--and one that is conscious of and in solidarity
with all the struggles for justice, including, of course, the
struggle for Black gay liberation.
In the opinion of my organization--Workers World
Party--fighting racism, in the interests of building unity
among the working class and its most oppressed sectors, is the
most important task facing all of us who fight for social
justice. And it is, first and foremost, a task that is the
responsibility of white progressives and revolutionaries.
The slogan on every issue of our newspaper is: Workers and
oppressed people of the world unite!
But that can only happen if the less exploited and less
oppressed take up the struggles of the more exploited and more
oppressed with commitment and determination. And that means
that men must embrace the struggle for full equality for women.
Straight people must defend equality for LGBT people. Whites
must join people of color in their struggle for equal rights
and an end to the scourge of racism. And the white LGBT
community must stand in solidarity with the Black, Latino,
Asian, Native and Arab LGBT communities.
Now, I understand that these sentiments might, at first
glance, seem very idealistic, even more like a utopian dream
than a strategy for political struggle and victory. But they
have their origin in the very concrete and difficult struggles
of the international working class over the past several
hundred years. When people are in the heat of struggle, they
are in a position to learn difficult lessons and solve
difficult problems quickly and well.
First and foremost, of course, they want to win. When a
political struggle erupts, the daily interests and routines of
our lives are more or less put on hold. Our attention and
intelligence are focused intensely on the task at hand. When we
discover weaknesses in our ranks, we are highly motivated to
correct them. And all too often the weaknesses we discover
involve divisions based on gender, sexual orientation and
race.
Leaders who are worth their salt must always be fighting all
these manifestations of injustice. But it is in the midst of
struggle that the greatest inroads can be made in removing
these divisions among the exploited and oppressed. It is in the
heat of battle that the less exploited and the less oppressed
are willing to listen, are prepared to change, are most able to
put themselves in the shoes of their more exploited, more
oppressed sisters and brothers, to understand what it means to
face the daily racism, sexism and super exploitation of
capitalist society, and to cast off their own backwardness in
anger and disgust and do whatever is necessary to overcome the
divisions that threaten the victory of all.
The LGBT communities need to start making more noise. We
need to start challenging the rule of the bigots. We need to
revive the spirit of Stonewall. Let's start raising the issues
that fester in our communities, that hold us back, that make
our lives less full than they should be.
We in Workers World Party pledge our support. Our white
comrades will explain to other white workers, patiently but
firmly: While people of color remain oppres sed, your own
liberation is impossible.
Reprinted from the July 3, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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