Re: Avoid Sectarianism & Opportunism (was Re: victimology)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>>In general I have a strong belief that the most deeply felt need of both
>>>men and women of Mexico and Central America is to grow up and flourish in
>>>their home villages.
>>
>>Capitalism & imperialism do not allow them to, and more women than
>>ever have & will be drawn into wage labor.  We need to organize
>>wherever the masses find themselves.  Migration may bring new
>>miseries to migrant workers, whether they end up in Northern Mexico
>>or the USA, but Marxists do not oppose migration for this reason.
>>Marxists' job is to do what we can to bring about socialism, not to
>>foster impossible nostalgia or to lecture women to go back to their
>>home villages & flourish there.  The masses _cannot_ flourish under
>>capitalism whether they remain in their hometowns or migrate to big
>>cities.
>
>Some listers may remember Zeynep Toufeckioglu, who briefly shone on
>the early Marxism lists and then disappeared back into Istanbul.
>Zeynep spent a couple of months traveling around Chiapas a few years
>ago. When she passed through New York on her return, she told me
>that the women of Chiapas were not permitted to speak to men unless
>spoken to. Does that qualify as flourishing in their home villages?
>
>Doug

Not only are rural women oppressed by old patriarchal ways under
capitalism (and capitalism & imperialism make use of reactionary
patriarchal oppression -- e.g., aiding the Afghan mujahideens in the
fight against the old Soviet Union); the special problem of the
oppression of women by rural patriarchy will _not_ automatically
disappear if and when we make a transition to socialism.  Observe the
oppression of Albanian women in Kosovo, trapped in the old ways of
rural patriarchy, before, during, & after Yugoslav market socialism.
Urban women, be they Albanian or of other nationalities, fared much
better than rural women under Yugo socialism, though they were not
fully emancipated either.

Yoshie