>>158128Historical materialism begins from real, observable biological distinctions like sex. The oppression of women arose from the development of private property, class society, and the family—not from “gender stratification” in the abstract.
As Engels shows in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", sex-based roles became class-based oppression with the rise of inheritance and the patriarchal family. This is not idealism or vulgarity, but scientific socialism.
>Vulgar Marxism is truly a cancer that is killing Marxism.Individualism—the idea that the individual is the primary unit of social reality and the bearer of rights, value, and freedom—is not a neutral concept. It is the ideological cornerstone of bourgeois society.
>Well, guess what, gender is a superstructure, it's not the base. And the base is economic stratification of sex, not sex in itself. You confuse the economic base for literal biology which has nothing to do with historical materialism.The material base includes not only the economic structure, but the biological existence of human beings, especially in reproduction and labor. Sexual reproduction and the division of labor by sex are material facts that precede and shape the social relations built atop them. Gender roles are social and ideological, yes—but they arise from specific historical forms of the family, labor division, and class relations. You can't theorize gender in the abstract—only in connection to how women’s oppression is rooted in the organization of labor and reproduction under class society. Saying “sex has nothing to do with historical materialism” reverses the Marxist method. It detaches consciousness from material life and replaces it with abstraction.
You're confusing the Marxist distinction between base and superstructure. The sexed body, and the labor and reproductive roles based on it, are part of the material base. Gender roles arise from these material relations—not from pure ideas or economic stratification alone. Detaching gender from biology and material life is itself an idealist error.
>You're the only idealist in the room. Even dialectical materialists say it is a method, not some perfect ideal system that conveniently confirms all your already existing beliefs like transphobia, nationalism, conservatism and all the other reactionary dogmas.Transgender ideology centers personal identity over objective relations of sex, labor, and production. It detaches gender from the biological division of labor that underpins women's special oppression, and therefore erases material conditions in favor of self-declared inner truths. Asserting an internal "gender identity" that overrides biological sex reflects bourgeois idealism, where feeling becomes reality, and class becomes irrelevant. This mirrors liberalism’s focus on personal liberty over collective emancipation.
Marxists understand sex difference through the reproduction of labor power, property, and family. Transgenderism idealizes gender as a floating abstraction. It is anti-historical and anti-materialist by definition.
>>158131Yes, gender is historically conditioned. But that does not mean it is free-floating or purely ideological. Gender emerges from the division of labor by biological sex—especially the role of women in childbearing, childrearing, and the reproduction of labor power. This is not "essentialism"; it is historical materialism. Capitalism inherited sex-based labor roles from previous class societies.
>Gender roles became a thing through religious influence from the church.Religious institutions reflected and reinforced real social relations based on who could labor, who bore children, who owned property, and who passed it down. The family, as Engels outlined in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", reflects changing property and labor relations, not arbitrary ideologies.
>If gender were something objective the concept of "man" and "woman" Wouldn't be so different historically and geographically through out time and history.Just like class formations, state structures, or even wage labor, gender evolves through history, but always in relation to material conditions, especially the organization of reproduction and production. Diversity of form ≠ nonexistence of material content. The material basis is sex, and gender is its superstructural form. Biological sex (the capacity to bear or not bear children) is a real, material foundation.
The material basis is biological sex and the mode of production, and gender is its superstructural expression. Biological sex — including reproductive capacity — together with the mode of production form the material foundation of gender. Gender is the social and ideological expression of these material conditions, shaped by class relations and historical context. Attempts to separate gender from biological sex and the mode of production result in idealism, treating gender as a purely psychological or individual identity disconnected from its material and social origins.