International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Abortion Rights After Dobbs: The State of the Struggle

Johanna Brenner — 2024-04-27T11:41:00Z

“Changes in public opinion have not yet brought changes to Republican-dominated state legislatures, not surprising when we consider their lop-sided gerrymandered character. Yet Republicans are now on notice, even in very, very red states.”

- Feminism / United States (USA), Abortion and reproductive rights

Marx for Today: A Socialist-Feminist Reading

Johanna Brenner — 2019-03-08T07:05:22Z

Considering his work as a whole, Marx had little to say directly about women's oppression or the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism. And some of what he had to say was, well, misguided. Yet Marxist feminists have drawn on his thought to create a distinctive approach to understanding these issues.

- Feminism / Marxism, Women

Indigenous Womxn's March

Johanna Brenner — 2018-01-25T08:14:53Z

On Sunday January 21, Portland's streets were filled by Indigenous women, men, and two-spirited people marching with their allies to honor Indigenous Womxn Warriors, to remember and demand justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, girls and transgender people(#MMIW), to honor the earth and the Water Protectors, and to protest the oppression of Indigenous women throughout the globe, including jailed DAPL activist Red Fawn Fallis and Berta Caceres, environmental justice leader murdered by the Honduran regime.

- IV516 - January 2018 / United States (USA), Women

Portland's MAX Murders, the Alt-Right, and the Left's Response

Johanna Brenner — 2017-06-13T16:58:37Z

Portland, Oregon became national news, following the May 26 murders on the MAX (the city's light rail system). The killer, Jeremy Christian, slashed the necks of three white men (one survived) who tried to end his threatening tirade against two black teenage girls, one wearing a hijab.

- IV509 - June 2017 / United States (USA), Far Right, Racism and Islamophobia

Materialism and Feminism

George Souvlis, Johanna Brenner — 2017-04-18T06:45:03Z

Johanna Brenner: I grew up in a staunchly liberal family and remained politically liberal until I joined the movement against the Vietnam war, where I was introduced to anti-imperialist politics and then Marxism and “third-camp” socialism. In the late 60's I was part of the student left that turned toward organizing the working-class. I was a student at UCLA. We organized student support for a teamster wildcat strike and we had a group called the Student Worker Action Committee that published a newspaper, Picket Line, where we covered different worker and community struggles in Los Angeles. I was rather slow to embrace feminism, but in the 1970's I got involved with a socialist-feminist group called CARASA (Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse) which began in New York City. Some friends and comrades formed a Los Angeles branch of CARASA and we were able to connect to radical women of color doing community organizing around sterilization abuse in LA. From that point on, I have been deeply immersed in Marxist-feminist theory and politics.

- Feminism / Women, Sexual politics

Demonstrate by Day, Strategize by Night: A Report on the Socialist Convergence

Johanna Brenner — 2016-08-27T15:16:48Z

On the steamy evening of July 27 in Philadelphia a raucous audience of close to 800 gathered to discuss electoral politics and movement-building. This was day three of Socialist Convergence, organized by a coalition of left organizations to create a socialist presence during the Democratic National Convention. Our target participants were the Sanders delegates and supporters who had promised to challenge the party's lack of democracy and to organize protests in and around the convention that would serve notice on the party establishment.

- IV499 - August 2016 / United States (USA)

What Is the Next Left?

Johanna Brenner — 2016-07-07T15:20:00Z

At this moment I find myself swinging between optimism fueled by the previously unimaginable appeal of Sanders' “socialism,” the energized base of young people attracted to his campaign, this evidence that the neoliberal consensus is dead, and despair about the HUGE gap between this political opening and the organizational capacity of the revolutionary socialist left. Like many others, I'm asking can anything be done?

- IV498 - July 2016 / United States (USA)

Even Better the Second Time Around: Reflections on an Updated Socialist-Feminist Classic

Johanna Brenner — 2015-08-12T09:21:42Z

Originally published in 1979, Beyond the Fragments (BTF) was an intervention in the left by three British socialist-feminist activists who offered a thoroughgoing critique of democratic centralism and the vanguard party ideal as it was then practiced on the revolutionary left. BTF argued that left groups had failed to capture the creativity and enthusiasm of the tremendous numbers of people who had entered political activity in the 1960s and 70s. The authors recognized the necessity of an organization capable of gathering the energy of social movements and union strugglesâ€”the “fragments”â€”and focusing that energy on a revolutionary vision and anti-capitalist politics. However, they argued that the left would inevitably fail unless we were ready to revolutionize ourselves, taking on board insights from the women's liberation movement.

- Reviews section / Women, Reviews

Selling Sexual Services: A Socialist Feminist Perspective

Johanna Brenner — 2015-02-04T07:58:17Z

The current debate about sex work among feminists generates more heat than light. Accusations of bad faith fly back and forth across the two sides, research findings are mobilized to undercut the other side even when the research itself is limited by its methods and scope, different sex worker voices are authorized by each side as either genuine or manipulated, depending on whose position those voices seem to support.

- Sexual politics / Women, Sexual politics

21st Century Socialist-Feminism: Part 2

Johanna Brenner — 2014-08-28T17:48:22Z

Looking back, we can see how the fate of socialist-feminism is closely tied to the fate of the broader institutions of working-class struggle. Socialist-feminists have always engaged in a two-sided effort: to bring an anti-racist, class-based feminist perspective into social movements and left political parties and a socialist perspective into feminist politics and women's movements. Social-welfare feminism, social-democratic feminism, revolutionary socialist feminism, revolutionary women of color feminism, indigenous feminism, are some of the different currents within socialist-feminist politics. We can think of socialist feminism very broadly— to include all feminists (whether they would identify with the label or not) who see class as central but would not reduce relations of power and privilege organized around particular identities (e.g., gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, nationality) to class oppression. Revolutionary socialist feminism is distinguished from social welfare or social-democratic feminism in that, whether implicitly or explicitly, revolutionary socialist feminists are unwilling to allow capitalism to set the horizon for what can be envisioned or struggled for.

- Sexual politics / Women, Sexual politics