Re:Suicide was re: Peter Singer & the "Quality of Life" Ethic

["Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Marx' original focus on suicide is located in gender issues, the
> suicides of bourgeois women, most of them living under severe
> familial constraints (The Holy Family). He attacks the exiting
> form of the family saying that it must be "destroyed in theory
> and practice."  Later he published a critique on Jacques Peuchet
> (1845) which explored the economic and social dimensions of
> suicide.  He says that it is not only the workers but the whole
> of bourgeois society that suffers under dehumanized social
> relations. He sees suicide as the result of a "deficient
> organization" of society.
*****
Mao Zedong: Miss Chao's Suicide (1919)

A person's suicide is entirely determined by circumstances. Was Miss Chao's 
original
idea to seek death? On the contrary, it was to seek life. If Miss Chao ended up 
by
seeking death instead, it is because circumstances drove her to this. The 
circumstances
in which Miss Chao found herself were the following: (1) Chinese society; (2) 
the Chao
family of Nanyang Street in Changsha; (3) the Wu family of Kantzuyuan Street in
Changsha, the family of the husband she did not want. These three factors 
constituted
three iron nets, composing a kind of triangular cage.

Full writing at: http://www.maoism.org/msw/vol6/mswv6_05.htm

Macdonald