I have recently been interested in organizing more (outside of animal rights and anti-racism) and was looking to join a communist org. Unfortunately the choice for these kind of movements is incredibly limited where I live. I found a trot org that is linked to IMT near me and was willing to give them a chance as choice is limited.
After reading their manifesto, I think I won’t bother… Here’s a translation of some paragraphs.
Our position is very simple: in every struggle, we always take the side of the oppressed against the oppressors. But this general position is not precise enough. We must add that our position is essentially negative. This means that we are opposed to all forms of oppression and discrimination - whether they target women, people of color, homosexuals, transgender people or any other minority.
However, we firmly and categorically reject “identity” politics which, under the pretext of defending the rights of this or that group, play a reactionary role, dividing the working class, weakening its unity and providing invaluable aid to the ruling class.
The labor movement has been contaminated by a whole series of ideas that were alien to it. Postmodernism, identity politics, “political correctness” and other oddities have been smuggled in from the universities by the “left” petty bourgeoisie, who act as a conveyor belt for reactionary ideas alien to the working class.
Stemming from “postmodernism”, identity politics have confused the brains of many students. But these ideas have also been introduced into the workers’ movement, where they are used as weapons by the bureaucracy to combat the most resolute militants.
They have a whole FAQ section dedicated to how inclusive writing is wrong because it divides the working class ffs.
You have a good nose for bullshit. “Identity politics” have been central to successful organized Marxism for over a century. Attributing them to ‘post-modernism’ is itself a contemporary idea that divorces them unessecerily from class politics.
Most communist states always had specific women’s labor and political groups, as well as usually catering towards the needs and problems of ethnic minorities. The need for this is well recognised even as far back as Marx and Engels themselves, with Eleanor Marx being one of the prominent caretakers and disseminaters of Marx’s writing into the hands of the continental European left after his death, with the Bolsheviks truly being the party that insisted on a multicultural doctrine, having leaders from many different ethnicities and nationalities, and insisting on native language and ethnic conservation programs (something which even the modern CPC continues today). It is in fact a rejection of material support of this multi-cultural heritage that exemplifies the worst revanchist and reactionary elements of modern Russia, which is now experiencing a greater cultural flattening (loss of non-Russ language and culture) than ever existed during the Soviet period.
The idea that we can just become one big working class is an idealistic model of class politics that doesn’t represent historically successful communist parties. In order to get to that point, as that is where our power lies, through our labor, we will have to address matters of identity. We don’t get there by insisting they don’t exist.
Edit: This catering toward ethnic minorities within the party btw, was one of the essential wedges used by the ‘National Socialists’ to distinguish themselves from communist parties. You know we are in a bad place theoretically when even supposed communist organizations are parroting literal Nazi propaganda towards organizing the working class.