A Woman's Place Is....

(By janeyhenning - Flickr: stirring, CC BY 2.0)

Allegedly we Trump-supporting, MAGA-types will finish the title sentence with: A woman's place is in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. The Trotskyist retort is that we want deny women their Constitutional rights--and even their humanity--by forcing her back in the kitchen. We're not gonna force her to do anything.

But now comes The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) with a feature article entitled Fight for women’s rights expanded when millions joined the workforce, authored by Maggie Trowe. I'm not clear how Ms. Trowe will complete the sentence. How about

A woman's place is on the construction site, wearing steel-toed boots and pregnant?

Or perhaps the boots should be replaced by steel-toed high heels? Either way our young lady needs to be pregnant. The working class depends on it. Ms. Trowe's lede paragraph:

The falling birth rate and rising obstacles workers face to being able to afford to raise children have become key issues in the 2024 presidential campaign. Decades of employer attacks on wages and working conditions have made starting a family much more difficult for workers and produced conditions that reinforce the second-class status of women under capitalism. 

And, later on, she writes

The U.S. birth rate in 2023 was 1.62 births per woman, down from 3.65 in 1960, and below the rate required to maintain the population.

Capitalist pundits who used to write articles warning of the dangers of “overpopulation,” now sound alarms about the “increasing burden of too many old people.” Their real concern is that with fewer young, healthy workers the capitalist class can’t count on a sufficient supply of labor to exploit.

There's a minor technical error here: Ms. Trowe's number is the fertility rate (the average number of children women bear over a lifetime), and not the birth rate (which was about 11 live births per 1000 women in 2021). But her larger point is absolutely correct. As a nation (and also as a working class) we don't have enough babies! More women need to get pregnant, like pronto!

Weirdly, in the same issue The Militant publishes an editorial praising Cuba, where the fertility rate has declined from just under 4.7 in 1963 to 1.57 today. It's been below 2.1 (the rate necessary to sustain the population) since 1978. So when it comes to having babies, the Cubans can't even keep up with the USA, where the fertility rate didn't drop below 2.1 until 2007. Unlike the US, Cuba can't accept immigrants. Indeed, folks are fleeing the island faster than they're being born, and Cuba's population is in absolute decline. Not exactly a role model for a baby boom.

Still, much credit to Ms. Trowe because she is the only Trotskyist on my beat that even mentions declining fertility rates. At least she acknowledges the problem.

She writes,

The average cost of childbirth today is $18,865. For those with insurance, the average off-the-top expense is $2,854. Feeding a hungry newborn can set you back $50 for a can of baby formula at Walmart. A box of Pampers is $35. When you add these to the persistently high cost of rent, food, transportation and child care, is it any wonder young workers have doubts about raising a family or that women are putting off decisions about whether to have children?

And she is right! It's very expensive to raise a child--and always has been. Though I'd argue that it's cheaper now than anytime in prior human history. When my daughter was born we toyed with buying cloth diapers and laundering them, presumably saving money. We quickly gave up on that and went for the disposable kind. Does anybody today still have to launder diapers?

So what's the SWP's solution to the not-as-sorry-state-of-affairs-as-it-used-to-be? For that Ms. Trowe turns to the SWP's presidential candidate, Rachele Fruit, who tells us exactly what we should do. Ms. Trowe describes her view this way,

Such a party [a hypothetical labor party --Ed] would fight for a massive, federally funded jobs program to put millions to work at union-scale pay, for wage and benefit adjustments so that every time prices rise our wages go up automatically...

Another name for this program is inflation. If you increase the money supply (needed to pay the additional wages) without proportionately increasing the quantity of goods sold, then everything just has to cost that much more.

How is this going to make raising a child cheaper?

Chief SWP honcho Jack Barnes describes the Party's economic plan this way:

At the same time, in face of capitalism’s accompanying curse of unemployment, the working class and unions must fight for a shorter workweek, with no cut in pay. And for a massive, government-funded program of public works to provide jobs at union-scale wages building housing, schools, hospitals, child care centers, rural development and other things working people need.

So the number of unemployed construction workers is probably around 1%. As a society we're maxxed out on construction--we can't possibly build all that extra stuff that Mr. Barnes (and also Ms. Fruit) thinks are needed without not building the stuff already under construction.

There's only one way around it--grow the labor force. As Ms. Trowe points out, non-pregnant women are already working, so now we need to get those pregnant ladies out of the kitchen and on the job as well. Girl, put on your hard hat and steel-toed high heels and get your tush busy building that new school that Her Brilliancy Rachele Fruit says we need. Even if you're pregnant. Especially if you're pregnant--who needs a new school if there won't be any children? 

Lay that cinderblock on the wall--from a scaffold 20 ft up in the air. High heels are really good for climbing ladders. Clean out that old asbestos. Girl, you gotta do your share--our socialist future depends on it. Set a role model for your sisters for appropriate choice of footwear. We need the babies and we need the construction workers. Remember, construction work (esp. asbestos removal) is safer for babies than smoking or using cocaine.

A few weeks ago I had a new roof installed on my house. About ten guys came over and did the job in a bit over six hours. No women--it was rampant discrimination. Surely a pregnant lady can climb ladders, not lose her balance on a sloped roof, haul 50 lb bags of shingles around, and handle a nail gun. It's never too early for a baby to start absorbing proletons and learning the benefits of a hard day's work. Pregnant women need to do their share!

Apparently being pregnant isn't hard enough. The SWP's economic plan says they also have to install roofs.

Nobody on my side of the aisle will require a pregnant woman to stay barefoot in the kitchen. But if you're pregnant, it does rather seem like a good idea. Much better than enduring 90 degree heat on a hot roof. The woman in the picture doesn't exactly look unhappy.

It's easy to poke fun at Ms. Trowe's article and the Party's nonsensical economic agenda. But I have to give Ms. Trowe a lot of credit--at least compared to other tendencies on the Trotskyist left. She at least understands that to have a socialist society--or any kind of society--there have to be children. She realizes that "freedom" doesn't reduce to the freedom to kill your baby. There are other more important things in life--like loving your child, and having a husband who can do the dirty, dangerous jobs that men often have to do, and who can earn you a living.

She understands that abortion has to be legal--it's an unfortunate corollary of modern medicine. But it's not a virtue. It's not something to be proud of.

Ms. Trowe is on the right side of a basic issue. And my poking fun at her kinda misses the point--which is to honor and cherish pregnant women. I think Ms. Trowe agrees with me.

Further Reading:

• Whiners & Complainers
• The SWIP Flips to SWOP
• The American Right and Trans Rights

 

The SWIP Flips to SWOP

Totally relevant picture about abortion (Source)

Insert any vowel into the acronym SWP (Socialist Workers Party, which publishes The Militant) and you end up with nonsense.

Random vowel insertion is the effect of this article, by Jacquie Henderson, entitled Ohio abortion referendum was blow to women, working class. I understand that the Party doesn't consider itself Trotskyist anymore (though they still frequently quote Trotsky), but this leaves that heritage so far in the dust that it's a real head-scratcher.

The lede paragraph:

After a national campaign organized by the Democratic Party, drawing in tens of millions of dollars, an amendment to enshrine the right to abortion in Ohio’s state constitution passed Nov. 7. The campaign had nothing to do with the fight for women’s rights — including the decriminalization of abortion — nor defending working-class interests.

Some background is important. The Party supported the Dobbs decision--in which the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights as a Constitutional issue, and instead referred the question back to the states and the people. This has been a political godsend for the Democrats, who have campaigned heavily on the so-called MAGA effort to ban abortion. The Dobbs decision led to no such outcome, and in fact abortion rights will soon be enshrined in law in all 50 states--it's that popular.

I can sort of see the Trotskyist logic in supporting Dobbs. They have long supported democratic rights, and therefore the Constitutional and civil rights of citizens. Abortion isn't even mentioned in the Constitution, and therefore neither the Court nor the Congress have any authority to legislate on the subject at all. Decisions about abortion should be left to the states and the people.

The Party, in their recent Political Report, which I reviewed here, in language I described as "mealy-mouthed," argued that abortion should be "decriminalized (whatever that means). "Mealy-mouthed" turns out to be an understatement. The offending paragraph in the Political Report quoted in my review is

...our communist program has nothing in common with bourgeois and middle-class forces--whether feminists, or campaigners for population control--who in fact advocate abortion as a means of contraception. We reject the pseudoscientific views of those who deny that the issue of human life, a profound moral question for all working people, is always involved in abortion decisions and procedures.

I don't think I understood what that paragraph meant. It's clarified in Ms. Henderson's article here:

The yes campaign was openly tied to getting President Joseph Biden reelected in 2024. After the vote, Biden declared, “Ohioans and voters across the country rejected attempts by MAGA Republican elected officials to impose extreme abortion bans.” He added, “The only reason abortion is banned in America is because of Donald Trump!”

In other words, the Party's position has nothing to do with abortion at all. They are simply against anything the Democrats are for--full stop. If the Dems were against abortion, they'd be for it. The problem with the Ohio referendum was not that it expanded abortion rights, but rather that it was supported by a bunch of evil, petty bourgeois Democrats--in an effort to get Biden reelected.

I agree with their assessment of the Democrat party. But setting oneself up as the "anti-Democrat" party seems to me just as illogical as Jeff "Vanguard Man" Mackler setting himself up as the anti-Trump party. It let's your opponent--be it Trump or Democrats--determine your entire political program.

I think the Party should have ignored the Ohio referendum altogether. The effect is ultimately inconsequential. As I recall, the Republicans had settled on a 15 week deadline for abortion. The referendum went for 22 weeks. According to the CDC, 93.5% of all abortions were performed by or before the 13th week. Fewer than 1% of abortions were performed at or after 21 weeks. I don't have numbers for 15 weeks, but it's likely over 95% of abortions occur before that deadline, and those that happen afterwards are almost certainly for compelling medical reasons, and not for the trivial excuses used earlier in the pregnancy. Abortion for compelling medical reasons will be allowed in any case.

The Party argues that enshrining the law as a state constitutional amendment will make it harder to overturn later, making it more difficult for "workers" to change their minds. This was the argument of the Pro-Life community. Though the Party takes this to unreasonable extremes. From Ms. Henderson's article:

The answer to inflation and growing pressures on families is not more abortions, as many Democrats argue. This is a woman’s medical decision. Workers should reject the push to use abortion as a means of contraception. At issue with abortion is a potential human being. Abortion should be a fallback, something that is needed when all else fails.

“This year workers have learned more about how to fight for better conditions, from striking autoworkers, casino workers, bakery and other unionists,” Hawkins said.

The SWP points to the powerful example set by the leadership of Cuba’s socialist revolution.

Fidel Castro led working people to conquer power. Millions of women participated in the defense and advance of the revolution, breaking down barriers to full involvement in economic, social and political life. The revolutionary government organized child care, school and workplace lunch and after-school programs to help overcome the inequality women face. Along the way they decriminalized abortion.

In other words, because Americans are supposedly getting poorer (worse housing, worse food, worse medical care) we don't need more abortion--but instead we need to imitate Cuba. Cuba--where housing, food, and health care a vastly more available than in the USA. Really?

The SWOP is a FLOP. 

Allow me a personal reminiscence here.

When I was 18 years old I returned to my hometown after living 18 months in Germany. A girl I knew from high school before I left invited me over to her house for milk and cookies--and the complete recording of Jesus Christ Superstar on the stereo set. She had her whole life planned out--and wanted me to be a part of it. She wanted to get married and have five children. And Jesus Christ Superstar was by far the best piece of music ever written. I didn't mention that I was a sworn atheist, and that my stay in Germany (frequent trips to the old East Berlin notwithstanding) had turned me into a committed Communist. Besides, I was way too shy to make the requisite phone call necessary to cash in on her offer, so nothing ever came of it.

In recent years I've come to reconsider that road not taken. I certainly wouldn't have joined the Socialist Workers Party. I probably would never have attended college. There is no way I'd have spent a year with my family living in Uganda. I wouldn't have married my current wife--who gave me two children and now two grandchildren--who is from the Philippines. I have a whole country-in-law, which has added a richness to my life that I think I would miss.

But just suppose--if I'd had five children beginning at age 20. It would have been a hardscrabble, difficult life--supporting five children without a college degree. No fun at all. But by now I'd possibly have a dozen grandchildren. Not just two. And lots of kids would take care of me in my old age--not just my daughter. Of course this assumes the marriage endured for what now would be 52 years.

There's nothing wrong with that life. But it would have taken courage and commitment that I didn't have at age 18. After all, I couldn't even make the phone call.

The SWP is at least pro-natalist. Which, considering that the average, elderly Trotskyist has zero grandchildren, is amazing. Most people with no grandchildren are envious of folks like me--and it's that envy that drives the whole feminist/LGBTQIA+ movement. But the SWP has somehow risen above that--and for that they deserve praise and admiration.

Further Reading:

• Chicago: Ilona Gersh Runs For Mayor
• The American Right and Trans Rights
• The Philippines

 

 

Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us

Authored by Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark, The low point of labor resistance is behind us is the political report adopted by the 49th Constitutional Convention of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), held on December 12th, 2022. The authors (whom I've dubbed the "Troika") are the long-time (going on five decades now) leaders of the Party. Comrades Barnes and Waters are over 80, while comrade Clark is about 70.

The premise is that the union movement has reached bottom, and because of economic misery workers are becoming more militant and more likely to organize and rebel. This, if true, will reverse a decades long trend that began in the 1970s.

Except I don't think it's true. Just today, in an editorial, the WSJ writes

Union members made up only 10.1% of the workforce last year, down from 10.3% in 2021, according to data released recently by the Labor Department. For a long time the prototypical union shop hasn’t been a private steel plant but a public school, yet the unionized share of government employees also fell.

Though the annual changes look small, they add up: The workforce in 2012 was 11.3% unionized, and in 2002 it was 13.3%. Organized labor hasn’t been able to stop the trend, despite frantic unionization drives, including many aimed at nontraditional members, such as the university graduate students who march under the United Auto Workers banner. Private workers are 6% unionized, down from 8.6% two decades ago. For public workers, it’s 33.1%, down from 37.3%.

Last week ZeroHedge reported similar statistics, along with this rather depressing gem:

The most unionized occupations are public safety (34.6%) and education (33.7%). The lowest are sales (3.0%) and computer and math jobs (3.3%). 

Bad news for Trotskyists, who don't consider cops to be part of the working class.

The Troika might concede that union membership hasn't yet recovered, but they'd insist that the trajectory has changed. Unions, they'd claim, are becoming more militant and better organized, which will be reflected in the overall statistics soon enough. They provide no data for that belief, but are concentrating their efforts in two unions: the bakery workers (BCTGM) and the rail workers. Among the bakery workers, 160 of them have gone on strike in recent months (120 at Ingredion, 40 at Corn Nuts). Both strikes have been settled. This does not auger a surge in labor activism.

The fact is that unions are increasingly irrelevant. There is a serious labor shortage for workers in blue collar professions, and those employees are getting raises. For example, Walmart recently raised starting salaries across the board from $12 to $14 per hour. That's a near 17% raise, for which no strike was required. They're doing this because they need the workers.

The Report consists of 27 sections, ranging in length from a paragraph to a page or two, organized within four chapters. The whole document (not counting prefatory material or illustrations) is about 60 pages long, or approximately 15,000 words. I read it in about three hours.

The first chapter is entitled Opposing US rulers' assaults on freedoms protected by the Constitution and their use of the political police. It describes in detail the unconstitutional persecution of Donald Trump and so-called "MAGA Republicans" by "the government's political police, first and foremost the FBI." It must be noted that the Party has had its own run-ins with the FBI before, notably the COINTELPRO lawsuit in which the Party won $264,000 in damages. Opposing the FBI is consistent with Party history, as the Report discusses at some length.

More, the Party notes that a majority of blue collar workers voted for Trump in 2016 and in 2020. Trump earned the vote of record numbers of Hispanics and Blacks (though the latter was still a small percentage). Therefore supporting civil rights in this case is in solidarity with the people whom they hope to represent. They cast themselves as being on the side of the "deplorables" and the "bitter clingers."

In their defense, the Report cites Leon Trotsky himself:

"Under conditions of the bourgeois regime, all suppressions of political rights and freedom, no matter whom they are directed against in the beginning, in the end inevitably bear down upon the working class, particularly its most advanced elements."

They are also very clear about who their opponents are.

Democrats, liberals, the "left," and "woke," so-called social justice warriors--not rightist or other reactionary forces--have led the assault against constitutional protections and freedoms in recent decades.

Trotskyists have always opposed the Democratic Party and all it stands for. The Report strongly reiterates that position.

While standing up for civil rights, the Report does not explicitly make clear their opposition to Trump and the Republican Party as agents of the bourgeoisie. Trump's name is mentioned in the Report only in passing, and the Republicans are not mentioned at all. This may lead to some confusion as to whether the Party still is part of the Left. I think they unambiguously are, but the Report would be better if they made that case explicitly.

The second chapter is entitled Capitalism's erosion of the family and the working-class road to women's emancipation. This includes some standard boilerplate:

Central to any communist program is a union-led fight for employment, with wage rates, work schedules, and job conditions necessary for families to live. ...

Jobs, not dependence on welfare programs, open a road forward. ...

Class-conscious workers call for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay, with regular hours.

So they're in favor of full employment, but then, after all that, they come out in favor of a comprehensive welfare program: "What is needed is a floor for all families--an income that's sufficient for workers..." to pay for all the bennies. The standard label for such a policy is universal basic income, and was championed by Andrew Yang in 2020.

The weirdest part of the Report concerns abortion. They claim that (boldface mine)

...we fight for women's right to reproductive and maternal health care, sex education (not gender indoctrination), as well as access to the safest and most reliable contraceptive methods and safe and legal abortion.

There is then a long section on how they supported Roe v Wade back in the 1970s, but have now come to regret that choice. The argument isn't entirely convincing. Summarizing in my own words, Roe v Wade short-circuited a national debate on abortion, depriving the working class of an opportunity to come to a decision on their own.

What the current Supreme Court has done, in the Dobbs v Jackson ruling, is simply return decisions about abortion to people in the individual states. They didn't rule on abortion one way or the other. The Party supports this move, and assumes that abortion will eventually be legal everywhere.

But now comes the truly mysterious part (in section 15; boldface mine):

The Socialist Workers Party unconditionally supports the decriminalization of abortion and joins others in fighting for it.

Decriminalization? Why that instead of legalization, as suggested in the prior quote? There is a difference, I suppose, but we're never told what it is.

A hint might be this:

...our communist program has nothing in common with bourgeois and middle-class forces--whether feminists, or campaigners for population control--who in fact advocate abortion as a means of contraception. We reject the pseudoscientific views of those who deny that the issue of human life, a profound moral question for all working people, is always involved in abortion decisions and procedures.

That second sentence is a bit hard to follow because of the double negative (...reject...deny...). It could be more simply written, but I think the mealy-mouthedness is on purpose.

I interpret the Party's position as pro-natalist, i.e., they want workers to have more babies. I think they're right--I describe myself using that word (and not just for workers). It's hard to square pro-natalism with unequivocal support for birth control and abortion. Therefore they equivocate.

The third chapter is entitled The Cuban socialist revolution and our communist continuity. It's much shorter than the first two, and in my opinion is completely wrong. Indeed, I think the Party's whole international analysis is wrong--I'll refer readers to books by Peter Zeihan for a clearer understanding. I'm going to skip over that here.

The fourth chapter--shortest of all--is Forging a proletarian party and educating its cadre. They claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that

The SWP is forging a proletarian party in the United States--a revolutionary political instrument of the working class, whose purpose, as our constitution asserts...is "to educate and organize the working class in order to establish a workers and farmers government, which will abolish capitalism in the United States and join in the worldwide struggle for socialism."

That's a tall order for a Party of about a hundred souls, with an average age in the 60s. The majority of comrades are at or nearing retirement age. Their current leading spokeswoman is Ilona Gersh, who is in her mid-seventies. The leaders are a pair of octogenarians.

What I am most disappointed with is that the Party has not brought in new, younger leadership. While I don't support the Party's goal of revolution and socialism, I have no fear of that ever happening even in my grandchildren's lifetime. But I'm sentimentally attached to my former comrades, and I want the Party to continue to exist. Having the same leadership for 50 years is not healthy. Presuming that the organization will have a meaningful voice when lead by octogenarians is fanciful.

I don't think Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters, or Steve Clark are serious about the World Revolution. They're just concerned for their own sinecures--and what happens after that let the devil take the hindmost.

I enjoyed reading the Report. It's well written, entertaining, and not too long. The illustrations are silly--they're mostly pictures of people standing around holding placards, such as shown on the front cover. But the book is professionally produced. I didn't find any typos--if there are some in what I've quoted here, they are mine. Apologies in advance.

Further Reading:

• Oberlin, 2017 (about the 48th Convention)
• Labor Notes 2022: Starbucks
• Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?

 

The American Right and Trans Rights

We academic, petty bourgeois types enjoy writing think pieces, letting us expound on the issues of the day. It's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and the conceit will have it that they make a difference in the world of ideas. In reality, of course, it's a way for the leisure class to occupy its time, because--after all--we don't have to work too hard for a living. We thinkers rely on American capitalism to slough off enough wealth to assure us that life's necessities will take care of themselves.

Our thoughtful essayist for today does his cogitating over at Left Voice (LV)--a leading mouthpiece for the petty bourgeois far-Left. Ezra Brain pens a thinker entitled Polarization, Economic Crisis, and Class Struggle: The Contradictions of the Political Moment. His byline tells us that "Ezra is a NYC based theatre artist and teacher," which suggests that he's not all that worried about where his next meal is coming from. Like me, he relies on the folks who stack produce at the supermarket for his sustenance.

Anyway, Mr. Brain's thinks are as good as anybody's, and his article is worth reading. Obviously I disagree with him. I believe he misses on two counts. He mischaracterizes the American Right, and his opinions on LGBTQIA+... matters are far from the mainstream. I'll close with a note on pronouns.

He writes (links omitted):

One of those strongest tendencies in the national situation is the advance of the Far Right and the escalating attacks on democratic rights — most notably the right to bodily autonomy and the right to vote. This right wing advance has echoes of the “culture wars” of the 1990s and early aughts, but it has some differences. First, this round of right-wing attacks on civil rights is successfully rolling back rights that were already legally enshrined. In other words, rather than just preventing the oppressed from winning more concessions from the state, the Right is successfully taking back concessions already won — such as the right to an abortion.

There is a contradiction here. The words "Far Right" suggest some kind of fringe movement. On the other hand "successfully rolling back rights" supposes support from at least a plurality of the electorate. I think designating what is longstanding Republican opinion as "Far Right" is not accurate. Center Right would be a better term.

And then I think he's factually wrong. The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision didn't rule on abortion at all. It merely clarified who in our system of government is supposed to make that decision. The Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision (1973), which ruled that abortion was a "right" under the "penumbras" of the Constitution. The Dobbs decision rejected that (admittedly weak) reasoning and said that, rather than the Court, it is the States that should determine abortion law.

Politically, the GOP is the loser from the Dobbs opinion. Advocating a (more or less) complete ban on abortion was great virtue signaling, and as long as the bans were hypothetical it was a vote getter. (After all, who doesn't want to be pro-life?) But after Dobbs it is no longer hypothetical, and it turns out that near total bans on abortion are very unpopular. See, e.g., Kansas, where abortion rights won a referendum in landslide.

The near total bans now common in red states will soon be overturned by an angry electorate. Mr. Brain's fears are not warranted. The "Far Right" isn't "Far," and it won't be successful in "rolling back" the right to abortion.

Regards trans rights, Mr. Brain opines that

...the Right’s attack is more radicalized than before, as reflected in its goals. For example, the last wave of anti-trans bills was focused on banning trans people — but, as is almost always the case, specifically transfeminine people — from using the public bathroom associated with their gender. This is, of course, a heinous and right-wing attack on basic rights, but it is primarily aimed to restrict trans people’s ability to integrate into public life. Put another way, the attacks sought to restrict which public spaces trans people have access to.

Mr. Brain is inventing "rights" out of whole cloth. Nobody has a Constitutional Right to use the women's toilet--not me, not Mr. Brain, and not anybody else. Standards of public decency are determined by majority rules--and since the majority are by a wide margin heterosexual men and women, it's they who get to write the rules. A reasonable standard (in my opinion) is that people without penises can use the women's toilet if they want to--because people without penises represent no sexual threat to women. Post-op trans women are easily accommodated by this rule. 

These new attacks, however, go further and attempt to attack trans people’s right to transition at all. From attempting to make gender-affirming health care for youth a felony, to designating gender transitions as child abuse, to removing trans health care from Medicaid coverage — the current wave of right-wing attacks on trans health care seek to forcibly detransition people or stop them from ever transitioning in the first place. In this sense, these attacks are aimed at restricting trans people not only in public spaces but also in private ones.

Mr. Brain and I are obviously starting from different places, as his personal webpage shows. He clearly exists somewhere along the LGBTQIA+... spectrum (I don't know enough about it to say where). I conclude he has no children and never will have children, and therefore he knows nothing about being a parent. If he did, he couldn't possibly have written the paragraph quoted above.

I, meanwhile, have children and now grandchildren. Like all parents, I want my children to grow up to be successful and fertile adults. That is, I want grandchildren. I definitely don't want my kids or my grandkids to decide, on their own and at a prepubescent age, to volunteer for irreversible infertility treatments. What Mr. Brain calls "gender-affirming care" really is a felony--as is castrating young boys against their or their parents' wishes.

Given his life history, I'll forgive Mr. Brain for not understanding that. But his opinion will never gain traction among people with children and grandchildren. It's a political lost cause, restricted to the remotest regions of the academic/petty bourgeois Left.

Finally, a comment on pronouns. Mr. Brain, in his CV (pdf), asks that I refer to him as "They" or "Them". I refuse to do that because it's ungrammatical, and Mr. Brain--for all his travails--has no authority to change the rules of English grammar. Like toilet usage, when it comes to grammar it's the majority who get to determine how language gets used.

More--and specific to this blog--one of my purposes here is civil discourse. For that reason I always address my interlocutors with an honorific--usually Mr. or Ms. It's a token of respect despite disagreements. There is no honorific (that I know of) for "they" intended as a singular pronoun. Since our friend has chosen "Ezra" as his given name--commonly associated with men--I have used the corresponding pronoun and honorific: Mr. Brain.

Further Reading:

• It's Not Just About Abortion
• Elections 2021--Race and Transgender
• Book Review: The Future of Higher Education

It's Not Just About Abortion

I never understood why a "right to abortion" is a core programmatic plank of Trotskyism. I didn't get it even when I was a Trotskyist. It seems to me that the dispute is not primarily of economic importance, and therefore it cuts across class lines. Yet to this very day all Trotskyists regard abortion as a working class issue. The recent leak of the Alito draft brings the matter to the fore.

Two articles guide our inquiry. The first, entitled Mobilize in the streets to defeat the attacks on abortion rights! by Delores Underwood and published in Workers' Voice (WV), represents the Trotskyist view as I recall it from my youth. The second, entitled Supreme Court leak fuels debate on defense of families, women’s rights, by Terry Evans and appearing in The Militant, represents a slightly heretical point of view. (The Militant is published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP.)

Ms. Underwood states the Trotskyist case for "reproductive rights" relatively clearly (link and italics in original).

Gender oppression places the burden of domestic and wage labor overwhelmingly on those with reproductive capacity. In today’s capitalist society, the cost to reproduce laborers falls largely on the domestic sphere, and particularly on the shoulders of working-class women: health care, insurance, food, and increasingly, education is paid for not by the regime that requires wage laborers, but by the laborers themselves. As we explained: “The capitalist system wants to have it both ways: It wants women to have children to reproduce the labor force (so it heavily regulates reproductive rights) but it does not want to pay for the cost of social reproduction of labor power.” And in every new crisis of capitalism, women are tasked with new burdens in the realm of waged work and care work. 

To phrase it in my own words via bullet points:

• The capitalist class needs to reproduce workers to maintain production.
• To do this it makes demands on women to have and sustain children--tasks which are very costly and time-consuming.
• Women should get paid for this labor, but they don't. Thus the capitalist class is disproportionately "oppressing" women.
• The capitalist class makes excess profits because of women's unpaid labor.
• Therefore the capitalist class puts restrictions on abortion to maintain this added level of "oppression" and to capture the surplus value (aka, profit) from unpaid labor.

This seems like 90% hokum and 10% truth.

The truth is that total production (usually known as GDP) increases with the size and skill level of the labor force. So no doubt, without new babies there will be no new workers, and as the population dies out production will come to a complete halt. Ms. Underwood has got that right.

But almost everything else is wrong. The primary beneficiary of increased GDP is not the capitalist class, but rather consumers--most of whom are workers. We're the people who buy whatever it is that capitalists and workers produce. Our standard of living depends on GDP.

Parents are the people who benefit most from children. They often rely on their kids to take care of them in their old age, and also if they're lucky they'll have some grandchildren. A fundamental task of being human is parenting children and raising them to be successful and fertile adults.

So I can't take Ms. Underwood's economic rationale for abortion seriously. And frankly, I don't think she takes it seriously either. Her motivation is much more visceral. She writes,

It’s clear that the conservative-majority court is seeking to reinforce the capitalist regime of social reproduction and heteronormativity and setting the scene for further attacks on queer, gender non-conforming, and trans rights.

She apparently has a thing against "heteronormativity." But of course it's those "heteronormal" people who actually have children. I suggest she envies them for just that reason, and it's because of envy that she wants to knock us heteronormal folks down a peg. Envy is what drives her crusade.

She really doesn't like babies. She applauds Black people for not having them.

The [abortion] ban will disproportionately affect Black women, oppressed by class and race, who are already four to five times more likely to have an abortion and are more likely not to have access to contraception.

Of course the disproportionate abortion rate for Black people can be seen as part of a eugenicist conspiracy. I don't believe in the conspiracy theories, but a lot of people do. Indeed, an early campaigner for birth control, Margaret Sanger, championed eugenics as a reason for her cause. By contrast, Kathy Barnette, candidate for senate in Pennsylvania and certainly not a member of the bourgeoisie, is clearly shocked by abortions of Black children.

Just for the record, trans people (at least those who have undergone medical procedures) are completely infertile. This is why parents object so strongly to their grade school children being taught that infertility is a value-free choice for them. No parent wants to raise infertile children.

I read somewhere that the fertility rate for gay people is 0.5--far below the 2.1 reproduction rate. I have no idea how that's measured and I grant no credibility to that specific number. But no doubt the fertility rate for gay people is far below that of heteronormal folks. Parents, rightly, usually love their children  unconditionally regardless of whether they're gay or have downs syndrome. But given a choice, they'd rather have children who will give them grandchildren.

For that reason Downs syndrome babies are typically aborted these days. Likewise, if there ever is a cheap genetic test for homosexuality, then I predict most gay babies will be aborted as well. Will Ms. Underwood still support abortion in that circumstance? Is she ok with the disproportionate abortion of female babies in China? For that matter, does she really think it is good that abortion rates among Black women is four to five times higher than for whites?

Terry Evans--in his article in The Militant--buys into the same hokey economics that Ms. Underwood describes, essentially demanding that capitalists bear all costs related to childbearing.

For working people, access to abortion cannot be addressed separately from the growing pressures tearing at our families. ...

That crisis is accelerating after years of declining real wages; unaffordable housing and child care; longer hours, forced overtime and draining work schedules that cripple family life; and the intolerable weight of mounting household debts. All of this is exacerbated by the biggest price rises in 40 years.

I guess that shared economic theory is what makes them both Trotskyists. But unlike Ms. Underwood, Mr. Evans doesn't envy the fertile. His support for abortion is tepid.

These questions can’t be addressed without a fighting program to win broader access to affordable family health care, child care, housing, jobs, contraception, easily accessible adoption and more. This fight is the road to win an unchallengeable majority to include abortion in all public family planning programs.

The picture accompanying his article shows a mother of three, "forced" to quit her job so to educate her children at home because of the pandemic. The implication is that she made the right choice--that her children are far more important than any career or paid employment. People who have abortions usually don't have three children.

I don't agree with Mr. Evans' economic theory, which is just silly, boilerplate Trotskyism. But unlike most of the Left, he is not extolling infertility as a positive good.

I think abortion has to be legal to some degree. It is an evil necessity imposed on us by modern medicine, which requires humans to make more choices about who lives and who dies. A necessity it may sometimes be, but it is never a good thing. Nobody is ever happier because they had an abortion.

Most of the Left (Mr. Evans excluded) isn't just in favor of abortion. They're support infertility generally, which is why they champion "trans rights" that render people infertile, and also gay rights, that render people infertile. Many people are infertile because they have no choice--and they of course deserve full civil rights as citizens. But nobody should be actively encouraged to give up child-rearing.

I think people who support abortion are envious--they either don't or can't have kids. They want to deprive the rest of us of that joy. It is envy that powers their crusade. Accordingly they describe abortion in euphemisms, such as "reproductive rights,", as "health care," or as a "choice." They don't like babies.

Lots of people depend on that fetus in the womb--not just the mother, but the father, grandparents, siblings, cousins, the school district--and yes, several steps removed, the capitalist. All of them want that baby to be born. Babies are a good thing--gay babies, girl babies, Black babies, even white male babies. 

Babies make people happy.

Further Reading:

• The New Aristocrats
• The New Socialist Resurgence Grouplet
• The Philippines