German "NE" organization sees homosexuality and not heterosexuality as decadence
[The below is by a German organization that claims to be Maoist and opposes the "Gang of Four." For MIM, it is further proof that this organization "NE" cannot be communist at all, because communists are for the abolition of all oppressions. MIM comments follow in brackets. We discovered the article in December, 1998. It is a follow-up to an article MIM already rebutted.
The authors seek to confuse two things--oppression of children and "homosexualism." Yet even in the three quotes below there is no evidence that Engels saw "homosexualism" as more corrupt than "heterosexualism." Quite the contrary, the published quote below from Engels's major work on gender quite clearly states that homosexual oppression is the by-product of heterosexual oppression: "the degradation of the women recoiled on the men themselves." Such statements are the routine view of communists, that it is impossible to have one isolated oppression. Oppression in one area taints everything else.
The quotes from Engels also have another unintended consequence for "NE." We thank NE for pointing out a mention by Engels of "bodily tribute." MIM and Catharine MacKinnon often come under fire from labor bureaucrats and gender bureaucrats for upholding a theory of "sexual appropriation." They want us to focus narrowly on boosting wages. Yet, there is Engels talking about "bodily tribute." For Engels, the word "tribute" is used in a way meaning a form of "exploitation" of a pre-capitalist sort or of some sort of oppression.
From the quotes below it is clear Engels wanted to expose the ruling class's top circles for sexual abuse of children. This is correct and MIM views the oppression of children as the principal aspect of sexual oppression in the imperialist countries.
That is not at all the same thing as seeing gay or lesbian practice as more corrupt than heterosexual practice. Having severely criticized patriarchy, Engels was correct to take on oppression by homosexuals as well. "NE" is tailing sub-reformist lifestyle-focussed people including devout Catholics and born-again Protestants by making the issue one of "homosexualism." We communists believe ALL sexuality is conditioned by decadent forces under imperialism.
Tactically it is fair game to target the ruling class in particular and attempt to split it by pointing to its abuse of children, both heterosexual and homosexual. That is what Engels was doing.
Today in the imperialist countries, it is correct to make the sexual oppression of children principal, because adults both male and female in the imperialist countries are net gender oppressors. The struggle against patriarchy focussed in such a way has every possibility of shaking the whole system of imperialism and patriarchy. NE's presentation of Engels's views vulgarizes them into narrow, sub-reformist born-again Christian views.
Gay and lesbian liberals who see their lifestyle as less oppressive and bigots like NE who see gays and lesbians as more oppressive are both focussed on lifestyles, not radical politics.]
Internet statement 12/98
Unequivocal statements by
Friedrich Engels
In the sixties of the 19th century the Lassallean current within the labor movement came to the fore, and, for the first time, a downright pederasm and homosexualism as well. Ferdinand Lassalle promoted a person in the organisation who had been sentenced because of pederasty, who later became his successor, and was resolutely fought by Marx and Engels: Johann Baptist v. Schweitzer. In connection with this person also a certain Karl Heinz Ulrichs appeared, who is regarded as the first propagandist of homosexualism and today is being fêted by the so-called homosexuals‘ movement. This Ulrichs sent his book also to Marx and Engels, apparently hoping to find support (already then they tried to use the labor movement for their own ends). Marx apparently refused to essentially take note of this book at all, and gave it to Engels, who in general was more familiar with these cultural questions, and the latter expressed himself unequivocally.
Friedrich Engels:
"That is really a very odd ‚Urning‘ you just sent
me. Those are just unveilings being extremely
against nature. The pederasts begin counting
themselves and find that they are forming a power
within the state. Only an organisation was missing,
but according to this it seems to be already existing
in the secret. And as they are counting so important
men within all the old parties and even in the new
ones, from Rösing to Schweitzer, their victory is
inevitable. ‚Guerre aux cons, paix aux trous de
cul‘, (1) it will go now. It is only a luck, that we
personally are too old to have to fear, this party
gaining victory, to have to pay bodily tribute to the
victors. But the young generation! By the way, only
possible in Germany that a guy like that appears,
translates the dirt into a theory and invites: introite
(2), and so on. Unfortunately he was not yet as
courageous as to confess openly being ‚That‘, and
still has to operate coram publico ‚from the front‘
even though not ‚from the front into‘ as he once
says by mistake. But first wait until the new
north-german penal law has acknowledged the
droits de cul (3) then it will turn out quite
differently. As for poor people from the front like
us, with our childish favour for women, things will
be going badly enough. If one could make use of
that Schweitzer, it was to elicit from this strange
man of honour the personal details of the high and
the highest ranging pederasts, what surely would
not be difficult for him as a congenial person...."
(Marx Engels Werke vol.32 -German edition - p.
324/5. Engels to Marx, June 22, 1869)
Acting behind the back of Marx and Engels, Wilhelm Liebknecht in connection with the leaders of the Lassalleanians initiated the notorious "Gotha program" which is a strange collection of phrases, by which a reactionary body of thought is carried into the labor movement through the backdoor. About this program Marx wrote a devastating critique which belongs to the most fundamental documents of communism at all ("Critique of the Gotha Program").
There are several further documents dealing with it. The Gotha program is an opportunistic and arch-reactionary program, and those responsible for it had for a long time blocked the publication of this critique. In the beginning of the nineties Engels, who thus incurred the anger of Liebknecht and others, pushed through the publication of the "Critique of the Gotha Program". The reactions were corresponding. It is absolutely interesting that Engels, describing Liebknecht‘s activities, does so in connection with expressions about the homosexuality among Lassalleanians, as the decisive Lassalleanian, Hasselmann, again was one of the "guild", and Engels was suspicious against several Lassalleanians to be of this nature.
He writes in a letter to F.A. Sorge of Febr. 11, 1891:
Friedrich Engels:
"......Liebknecht, naturally, is angry as the whole
criticism especially was aimed at him and he is the
father who has begetted the rotten program
together with the ass-fucker Hasselmann. ..."
(Marx Engels Werke vol.38, German edition - p.
30/31) ( remark4 )
These two quotations already make it clear in the most drastic fashion how Engels looked at the matter. But Engels thought also about questions of the descent and the origin of homosexuality. This is to be seen very clearly by the fact that he worked a passage into "The Origin of the Familiy, Private Property and the State".
Friedrich Engels:
"The latter [the Greek men], who would have been
ashamed to evince any love for their own wives,
amused themselves with hetaerae in all kinds of
amours. But the degradation of the women recoiled
on the men themselves and degraded them too,
until they sank into the loathsomeness of boy-love,
degrading both themselves and their gods by the
myth of Ganymede." ( remark5 )
This book and its whole body of thought also corresponded to what Marx thought. Thus the position of Marx and Engels in this question is completely unequivocal. And all the more it is blatant, and aims at murdering the thinking, if a majority of the homosexualists simply wipes out the fact that this cannot have anything to do with Marxism, and wants to imprint their total mental and physical filthiness upon this movement. To everybody, however, who uncovers these things, the reaction from their part is a verbal running down, which cannot be limited by any means, with a subliminal threat also to all the others never to touch upon these things.
Editorial staff of Neue Einheit
98/12/15
remarks:
(1) "war to the cunts, peace to the assholes"
(2) become member
(3) rights of the ass back to text
( remark4 ): By "Liebknecht" Wilhelm Liebknecht is meant, who in 1875
worked together with the Lassalleanians.
Wilhelm Hasselmann was one of the leaders of the Lassalleanian
"Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein" - "General German Workers‘
Union" back to text
( remark5 ): The translation by Progress Publishers, Moscow, Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, III, p. 239, was
checked over by us. Their translation of the German "Widerwärtigkeit der
Knabenliebe" by "perversion of boy-love" is not correct, so we had to
replace it by the direct counterpart "loathsomeness" back to text