We still need more Stonewalls

There are many articles in the media drawing attention to the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall protests, which is said to have signified the rise of LBGTQ resistance.

A change in people’s attitudes towards others is a vital part of the revolution in ideas that is the necessary prerequisite of socialism. It is possible that ideas about sexuality will change within capitalism but what is evident is that any legalisation will be superficial in character and subject to reversal. Only socialism can provide a lasting liberation. In socialism we wouldn’t be free to do whatever we wished. But the constraints on our personal freedom would be self-determined by local communities agreeing as equals and not imposed on us by the State. Socialists have sympathy with all those who want the liberations a society promises. The sympathy must be specially strong for the young people grasping this illusion of freedom to find themselves caught in the bondage of capitalism after all. What they — we, all of us — need is a free society in which mankind can, for the first time, find fulfilment. 

Socialism is not a mere economic proposition. It is about more than simply “us” owning the factories instead of “them”. It is about more than our standards and norms becoming the dominant ones instead of the norms and standards of capitalism. If socialism has any meaning it means freedom for human beings to determine their own lives in a society which is theirs. Not only freedom from the powers which oppress us now but freedom to aspire to new ways of living. Because we all live in an extremely unfree society we are all conditioned to be unfree. Because capitalism is an unfree system it legislates against certain free desires. What sort of unfree society is it that tells people that it is illegal to express their love until the state offers its consent? Socialism will be a free society.

Capitalism does its best to turn sex into a commodity. Love for its own sake is a wicked deviation in a system where nothing is done for its own sake. Doing things for their own sake is an indulgence to be frowned on. Socialism will offer economic freedom and that will provide the basis for true cultural freedom. The two are inseparable. Cultural and sexual freedom cannot exist within a capitalist society. How will we ever be free to behave as we want while the means whereby we live are not owned or controlled by ourselves? How can people inhibited by the restrictions of poverty be free to enjoy sexual pleasures to the full? The right to live as sensually happy co-habitants with nature will be possible once we have become free from a society which organises our lives for us, as if our humanity is an impediment to the real earthly purpose of making profits. Only in a socialist society will the basis for real liberation of human feelings and relationships be possible. Until there are no laws against loving or governments legislating about what it is right to feel, or bigots pronouncing on the terms of normality, society will not be free and those of us who want it to be cannot rest. Prejudice against gay and transgender people is part of a mindset which holds us back from working together to make a better world. Even though society is becoming more accepting overall, we won’t completely rid ourselves of prejudice without confronting the institutions which create it.

The Socialist Party holds that sexual activity between consenting adults which gives pleasure to the participants and does not harm anybody should be entirely their own affair. Discrimination is wrong and groups are right to want to change it but we must tackle cause and not effects. Pressure groups fragment the strength of the working class which should be united to bring about the overthrow of the capitalist system. The struggle for socialism has always been, among other things of course, a struggle for a rational attitude to sexuality and part of socialist consciousness is being free from prejudices about sexual orientation. It is time for working people to think in terms, not just of the “liberation” of a group of us but of our whole class.