From: "jurriaan bendien" <Jbendien-AT-globalxs.nl>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: M-FEM: All Work and No Play? No Way!
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 13:36:51 +0100


Since Justin has an uncanny knack of misrepresenting my position, I thought
I would reply to his lenghty missive from a while back.

Justin: 

> Marxism  does not have an elaborated account of the nature of other
> forms of oppression or a theory of what emancipation from them would look
> like. JB admits this in the context of womens' oppression, a topic that
did not much exercise Marx. 

No. What I say is that Marx didn't talk about a lot of forms of oppression
and a lot of things he could have talked about. But saying this is facile,
especially in the light of the fact that Marxists subsequently have been in
the vanguard of those analysing "other forms of oppression"

Justin:

As I remarked, there's a page of sketchy theory and
> rather inadequate theory in the Manifesto, and very little else. 

Justin's approach to Marxism seems to be top study Marx's text and see if
all the problems of today are adequately addressed there, or to find "legal
precendents".  This seems a bit like biblical fundamentalism to me. 
Marxism isn't the law of torts either.

Justin: 

 Marx (does) not address women's oppression in capitalist society as
something distinct from class exploitation. 

True in the sense that his emphasis was on social classes, on the formation
of class consciousness, not on the formation of feminist consciousness. 
For Marx the subjugation of women is bound up with class society. Therefore
methodologically women's oppression is a distinct aspect, insofar as class
society precedes capitalism. 

Justin: 

Bebel's famous book is probably the most
> systematic treatment in the classical tradition, and it's old and rather
> sexist. 

Yes, sexist from a contemporary point of view. Old from a contemporary
point of view.  But so what ? No one is recommending Bebel as a guide to
today's problems or saying it represents the Marxist position today.

Justin: 

JB says he thinks Bebel had a point: it would be better for women
> to stay at home with the kids and pay the man a family wage. 

No.  I am saying that, comes to that, the "family wage" is on the whole
preferable to both parents working for half the wage.  I make no
presumptions about gender roles.

Justin: 

Well, a family wage would be nice, but why should it be the woman who is
expected to stay home with the kids? Why not have a set of expectations
that allows people to choose without gender role expectations? 

Indeed why not ?  This is a valid point feminists have made.

 
Justin: 

Any socialism taht consigns women to the home (as opposed to
> letting parents choose whether to do primary childcare or not in a
> non-sex-specific way) is a failure in addressing wiomen's oppression,
part
> of which is precisely the strong expectation that childcare is their
> "natural role."

Agreed.

Justin: 

Incidentally JB thinks it was quite appropriate for the male old Bolsheviks
to not treat K as "one of the boys" because she was, after all, a girl.  

I did not say that.  I said somewhat facetiously, Kollontai was a woman and
hence not one of the boys.  Justin is trying to foist sexism on me again.

Justin: 

> Marxist treament of race oppression and racism is similarly shallow, by
> the way. 

I disagree. The analyses made of race by Marxists are better than its
rivals, leaving aside Stalinist and eurocentric deformations, and the
commitment of Marxists to fighting racism has been durable and very
influential.  Check out for example the journal Race & Class.  Check out
CLR James's writings.  Check out the enormous Marxist literature on the
subject.

Justin: 

Marx has a few remarks in letters about English racist attitudes
> towards the Irish that have theoretical significance, and he himself was
> antiracist, except towards the Slavs. 

Probably true, although apart from referring to "Albanian goatfuckers" Marx
also referred once in correspondence to "dirty Mexicans".  Marx's wasn't
fully freed from a certain bourgeois conception of "civilisation" that
prevailed in his time. 

Justin: 

But despite the existence of slavery
> and the prevelevance of racial oppression and theories of scientific
> racism in his day, despite the huge racial component of Britsh
> colonialism in India and in the latter part of Marx's life in Africa,
this
> proponent of universal human emancipation has almost nothing to say about
racism except that he's "agin" it. 

You are correct in that Marx did not engage in moral discourses about
racism, but he was well aware of it and condemned it.  More than that, he
provided a basis to explain the sources of racist hatred, the conditions
giving rise to it, in imperialism, in competition, in slavery, in the quest
for the extraction of surplus value.

Justin: 

Later Marxist theory here is not much better than its treatnment of women's
oppression. The classical discussion is cast in terms of the "national"
question, influenced by specifically Russian conditions, but nationalities
oppression is really a distinct phenomenon.

I disagree the treatment of women's oppression is cast in terms of the
national question by Marxists.   What is your evidence ?
> 
Justin: 

> Feminism is also not "wimpiness" if men advocate it, any more than it is
> manhating if women do. 

I agree, I merely said that you calling yourself a feminist is silly and
wimpish.  You are not a woman and you cannot liberate women.  What you can
be is a man who is proud to treat women well and is committed to support
women's liberation.

Justin: 

I myself don't identify maniless with dominance and strength and
womanliness as the opposite, unlike JB.  

JB doesn't make those identifications at all.  JB was saying that when
you've been with many stroppy women then as a man you know their greatest
virtue is when they are aware they have to back down sometimes.  But I do
believe there are definitely such things as "manliness" and manly ideals,
and I believe there is nothing wrong with it, if it is not at the expense
of women (or at the expense of men themselves !). I am not prepared to let
feminists define what a man is or should be. 
 
Justin: 

Women's oppression is not just the exploitation of women as
> wage workers. It also involves the exploitation of nonmarket domestic
> labor, which, contrary to JB's implied suggestion, probably adds as much
> value, if one can speak in value terms of nonmarket labor, as wage labor
> to the world's wealth.

Well Justin doesn't subscribe to Marx's theory of value, and hence isn't a
true Marxist by my way of reckoning (but it doesn't really matter, since
Marx never asked for orthodoxy and in fact said "I am not a Marxist").  I
reiterate, in a society regulated by the law of value unpaid labour is not
socially recognised in the same way as paid labour is, or completely
unrecognised.  Unpaid labour in the home lowers the reproduction costs of
the labour force to capital, hence enables a higher volume of surplus
value.  The advantage of Marx's value theory is that it explains the
exploitation of domestic labour (cf. e.g.  Wally Seccombe's writings and
the Canadian domestic labour debate, writing by Sue Himmelweit and others -
in fact I believe there are quite a number of books published on the
"domestic labour debate" of the 1970s and 1980s).

Justin: 

> Part of feminist theory, and this is linked to feminist and Marxist
> parctice, is also thinking through what the emancipation of women would
> consist in.

If you believe that, then why say "blueprints are not necessary".  And what
makes you think that people, including Marxists, have not thought through
this before ?

 If I am right, it requires more than just the abolition of
> wage labor plus the bourgeois feminist goals of equal treatment at work,
> which is apparaently as far as JB is willing to go, if that far. But what
> more is required? 

Well JB is a Marxist, so he's prepared to go further than full equality
under capitalism !  Justin feels something more is required and that he
needs to bring in feminism, but he has no answers.  I am saying that if he
stuck with Marxism he would get answers.

Justin:

Blueprints are not called for, but discussion of the issues is.  

See my previous remark about blueprints.  Personally I believe envisaging
alternatives is perfectly OK, and "discussion of the issues" is Ok if it is
done in good faith and not on the basis of a patronising moralism.
> 
Justin: 

> Practically speaking, feminism is the concrete struggle against women's
> oppression and for women's emancipation. 

I disagree.  I think that many feminists don't struggle against women's
oppression and for women's emancipation at all, I think they just struggle
for their own lives or their own career.  Feminism isn't necesarily
political at all.

JB is right that Marxists have generally done better than many political
orientations here. I would say that even where they have rejected the
feminist label they have often been practical feminists. 

I would agree with that, but I still wouldn't call myself a feminist, the
point I made at the beginning.

Justin: 

JB would doubtless be horrified to learn that I consider active support of
> abortion rights to be parctical feminism. 
>
Nothing that Justin says horrifies me.  I have heard it before.

Justin: 

> Marxism needs this theory and practice. It needs the theory because it
> doesn't have a good theory of women's oppression and emancipation.

I disagree.  Marxism has an excellent theory of women's emancipation, if
you are prepared to learn it rather than slag off at the imperfections of
past theorists.

Justin: 

  We need to work practically to advance the interests of women
> as such, and not just as workers. They are half the working class and
half
> the human race, and a theory and practice that does not do these things
is
> only a half theory and  half practice of human emancipation.
> 
I agree, with the proviso that women must liberate themselves, and cannot
be liberated by men.  And this is the only true basis for a feminist
movement.  Marxists can and do intervene in the feminist movement, but they
do so as Marxists and not in order to dissolve class struggles into
identity-politics. 

Cheers

Jurriaan



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