January’s Socialist Voice issued an editorial accompanying an article about trangender rights[1] that rightly calls for respect in debates on this topic. Surely, the more obvious issue here is why we have this debate at all. From the point of view of scientific socialism, the matter is entirely irrelevant.
As the article on “puberty blockers” demonstrates, some seek to give the issue of transgender rights a “Marxian” slant by arguing that capitalists are behind the bans in Northern Ireland. Capitalists’ objective, the article claimed, is to preserve a gender-binary labour force, which enables the “double-dip exploitation” of women. That attributes impressive foresight to the capitalists of the North. Most capitalists, most of the time, are usually poor at investment planning beyond a few years. If the thesis of the article holds, capitalists are now alleged to excel at long-term social engineering regarding women’s reproductive propensities to suit accumulation needs for the decades ahead, in cahoots with Sinn Féin. The article does not specify which capitalists are involved in which sectors. Nor does the article specify why capitalists seek to plan labour supply issues so far into the future and why puberty blockers are the chosen means to achieve this. Similarly, the article claims that breaking binary genders would weaken capitalist power. However, the proportion of the population undergoing gender transition is statistically tiny: possibly 0.017% of the Irish population (one media report from Newstalk claims 900 people changed their gender in Ireland between 2015 and 2023). Even if we accept that gender fluidity changes power balances in the labour market, its broader impact would be negligible, given the small numbers.
While the new generation of leftists emerging in the post-2008 era has embraced trans issues as an accompaniment to their politics, there are likely some Communists who believe nothing exemplifies “bourgeois individualism” more than that one’s subjective feelings about oneself should take precedence over a given biological imposition of nature. Other Communists of a certain stock may see such issues as exemplifying, in some vague way, the dysphoria of “moribund capitalist culture”. I think such views are probably wrong: humans have always sought to overcome experienced natural constraints in different ways, and trans identities are known in non-capitalist societies.
However, pace the younger generation of leftists, the more significant matter – to return to an earlier point – is that trans rights are issues Communists should probably be silent on. Communists cannot, and should not, take up every exploitation, concern or grievance preoccupying society. To do so promotes a disorganised, distracted and diluted character, where the “strategy” jumps from one injustice to the next. Given the barbarism capitalism is hurtling towards, Communists cannot afford such luxury. Campaign groups already advocate for such legitimate issues as trans rights, and some Communists may individually support those causes in their private lives, as this author does. However, it is not the role of the Communist movement to chase the tail of every individual, group or social grievance that presents itself. Communists are not a party of campaigns but a party of structural change. The overriding objective is to raise class consciousness to help “burst asunder” the “fetters” of capitalist social relations as quickly as we can: anything that does not advance that objective in concrete, meaningful ways is, from the scientific socialist point of view, irrelevant. There are, of course, some existing social grievances that will contribute to Communist objectives. Still, some will not or will do so only in the most tangential of ways, and it is important to be judicious in deciding where to marshal scarce resources to get a satisfactory return on investment. Championing puberty blockers – whatever one’s private opinion on the matter – is unlikely to be a wise investment of Communist time.
References:
[1]Each, A. (2025) “Banning trans healthcare: a murderous act of class treachery” Socialist Voice January 2025 issue: https://socialistvoice.ie/2025/01/banning-trans-healthcare-a-murderous-act-of-class-treachery/
