Salt of the Earth (was Re: On toilets)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pat Bond wrote:

>Here are some Jo'burg contributions to your witty dialogue:
>
>* at one level, the debate over how many litres to flush boils down to
>the issue of "skid marks"--i.e., whether low-income folk mind a dirty
>bowl because they're only getting 6 litres, instead of we white
>petit-bourgeois types who insist upon the standard-Euro 12 litres per
>flush (you will all recall the Larry Summers December 1991 memo which
>posits that Africa is 'vastly underpolluted' in part because people
>here don't mind the aesthetic distractions caused by pollution,
>compared say to rich folk in Beverly Hills--but he's never asked an
>African woman, I'd warrant a bet, and doesn't factor in the gender
>bias in household labour power, particularly when we're not talking
>just individual toilets but often shared facilities amongst several
>families... but then again an African woman's marginal productivity of
>labour is not 1/1000th as high as a Beverly Hills movie star, so why
>bother asking, eh);

The conflict between men and women, Anglos & Mexicans, & capital &
labor gets condensed in the issue of sanitation in _Salt of the
Earth_ (released in 1954 -- perhaps the greatest socialist & feminist
movie ever made).  The company denies Mexican-American miners
sanitation while giving it to Anglo miners, thus making the Anglos
feel that "they are at least not as bad off as Mexicans."  Women,
since they are the ones who prepare hot water, do the wash, etc., ask
men to incorporate "equality in sanitation" as part of the union
demands.  Men initially laugh at women and tell them that they have
more important issues than that to take care of first.  Only after
getting politically involved in the strike and eventually replacing
men as picketers (since a Taft-Hartley injunction puts a severe limit
on men's ability to picket), which leaves men at home doing household
chores that women used to do & learning firsthand the burden of
domestic labor, are women able to compel men to recognize the
absolute necessity of gender equality to wage class struggles
successfully.  This achievement of recognition does not come without
costs.  Near the end of the film, Ramon (as well as other men) gets
disgusted by the inversion of gender roles imposed by the exigency of
picketing, and after arguing with his wife Esperanza (who says to
Ramon, "The Anglo bosses look down on you, and you hate them for it:
'Stay in your place, you dirty Mexican' -- that's what they tell you.
But why must you say to me, 'Stay in _your_ place'?  Do you feel
better having someone lower than you?") he raises his hand to hit
her.  She responds calmly & gravely: "That would be the old way.
Never try it on me again -- never."  Next day, however, Esperanza has
regrets over the quarrel and worries that she may have been too harsh
on Ramon.  After listening carefully to Esperanza, her friend Teresa
tells her: "Anything worth learning is a hurt.  These changes come
with pain...for other husbands too...not just Ramon."  This necessity
of pain in learning may still not be understood by male Marxists too
well.

The movie ends with a sense of growth (recognition of the necessity
of gender equality) and hope for the future (it is surprising how
hopeful this film is, given that it was made by blacklisted
film-makers under the conditions of police & other harassments).  A
feminist scholar Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt visited the participants
in the film (the film was shot in neo-realist fashion, mostly
employing real-life miners & their families; the strike in the film
was based on the 1950-52 Empire Zinc strike in New Mexico) after the
film got rediscovered & acclaimed by second-wave feminists in the
70s.  The reality disclosed by Rosenfelt is bleaker, in terms of not
just repression of the Reds from which Local 890-Mine Mill suffered
but also fragility of gains in gender equality.  Women's
consciousness did get raised, and so did many men's.

*****   But the old way began to reassert itself [after the
strike]....On the whole, feminist militancy petered out in those
years [of the post-Korean War recession that closed many Zinc mines,
the purges & trials of labor leaders that struck hard the local's
leadership, etc.] as well.  The fifties did not provide a hospitable
climate for strong women.  Nor were all the male unionists in
Mine-Mill and the other leftist unions pleased about the emphasis on
feminism.  To Clint Jencks [Communist labor organizer who played
himself in the film], some of them complained, "Why did you have to
bring in the woman question?  Why couldn't you have made a straight
labor film?"...

...Juan Chacon [who played Ramon) believes that things have changed,
that women and men now see one another in more egalitarian ways.  His
daughter Esperanza (named after the Esperanza of _Salt of the Earth_)
is the secretary for Local 890 in Bayard.  More militant than some of
the union men, she seems at home among them.

But one is left somehow with the image of Virginia Chacon.  Strong,
intelligent, courageous, she lives with her husband some twenty miles
from the Bayard area....Chacon's mother lived with them until her
recent death, too ill to care for herself.  His father, an aged man
who speaks no English, lives nearby.  There is no phone, and Chacon
drives the only car to work.  Esperanza Chacon Villagran and her
husband live down the road in a mobile home.  She leaves her young
son with her mother when she goes to the union hall.  Virginia Chacon
stays at home and takes care of the baby [Yoshie: and she probably
took care of Juan Chacon's parents too].  When Juan Chacon told me
how much better things had become for the women, she said to him,
"Look at your own home.  What about me?"  (_Salt of the Earth_, Old
Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1978, pp. 143-6)   *****

Young women's partial liberation has, more often than not, been
enabled by neither an equal division nor full socialization of
household & care-giving labor.  Without Virginia's help, for
instance, Esperanza would likely end up in the same position as her.

That said, some important change has come -- younger women's fuller
incorporation into wage labor, which gives a much better terrain for
fighting for gender equality and keeping feminist gains.  The reason
why strong women of Virginia's generation could make feminist gains
during their active political participation in the labor movement and
yet were unable to keep them is that they were often active as
"auxiliaries" of male workers, not as _workers in their own right_
first and foremost.

Between Doug and Lou there has been a dispute as to whether
capitalism at this stage can be still "progressive."  The question is
a false one, in that it demands an un-dialectical answer.  Capitalism
(and its continuing destruction of subsistence economy in rural
agricultural areas) often makes things _worse_ for the poorest women
in terms of living standards (inadequate wages which may be worse
than what subsistence agriculture brings; simultaneous erosion of
marriages, kin & community support networks, and state-funded social
programs, which turns many women into single mothers with a double
burden under all the weight of immiseration; environmental racism
that poisons many of the poor; increased exploitation of women --
often as prostitutes & domestics with few rights in foreign countries
-- in the informal economy; etc.).  _At the same time_, the
destruction of the old ways enables women to break free from some of
the patriarchal weights embodied in marriages, families, &
communities, while bringing more women than ever into the _terrains
of struggles formerly closed to them_.  Capitalism &
proletarianization do not necessarily make women's lives immediately
better (in fact immediate effects have _always_ been for the worse
for the ex-rural proletariat from the beginning of capitalism) than
pre-modern patriarchy, but _wage labor_ does allow us to fight back
in a way women under patriarchy could not.  Everything solid melts
into air -- including patriarchal holds upon women.  Wage labor is
free labor -- free in the double sense of the word (free from old
ways of subsistence, patriarchy, etc., but also free to starve).

This dialectical answer, however, will only hold true _if_ we can
abolish capitalism & make a transition to socialism; otherwise,
proletarianization, for the majority of the workers of the world,
remains poverty (relative for all & absolute for some) & endless
struggles with no hope for a better future.

Yoshie