Re: To Bon Moun re M's comments: in marxism-digest V1 #4856

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

<snip>In my opinion, it is built into
> his economic theory and the very notion of dialectics itself. His
definition of
> surplus value excludes the labor of women in the family as well as other
> unpaid or underpaid labor, in addition to the value of the products of
nature
> that get used up in commodity production. In fact, I think that
"primitive
> accumulation" may be at least partly based on all this unpaid wealth
<snip>

> And what is more deterministic than "dialectical development"? Maybe in
> Darwinian evolution, but cultural evolution has an entirely different
> dynamic. A thing turns into its opposite and nothing else, ever? People
> have the ability to make choices for themselves, at least to some extent.
> But that's another issue,not for tonight.

Excerpted from an offline conversation with another comrade, in response to
the dominant culture's refusal to acknowledge class:

***The lack of class analysis is partly a product of its systematic
suppression, as we well know.  And it is a terrible setback for our
movement. But part of our problem is self-inflicted.  We have clung to a
definition of class we inherited from Marx, et al, that is
self-contradictory, and one which should include women, all women, as a
class.  The orthodox definition of class bequeathed to us by Marx & Co
(almost all men) privileged the experience of exploitation only in the
context of surplus value at the point of production, predominantly the
exploitation of men in one epoch because of a pre-capitalist sexual
division of labor, and chose to relegate the work of women, without which
there would be no material possibility of wage worker production, to the
realm of "nature."

My point is that the "marxist" schema of worker equals most revolutionary
class had to be abandoned by Lenin, who needed peasants for the revolution,
and in fact this non-waged class was the core of every successful socialist
revolution thereafter.  We should be asking why.  The assertion of wc=rc is
a non-sequiter, and history has proven it.  This does not mean I am
abandoning the working class.  How in the world would I do that?  But it
means that I am not counter-posing women against the working class, and I
am not going to limit the struggle of women to a subset of the working
class struggle.  Bourgeois women are oppressed by the very same aspects of
patriarchy that working class women are, and we have to face that
contradiction squarely and quit wishing it away with formulae.  Would we
abandon the fight against domestic abuse, for reproductive rights, or
against rape, because these manifestations of male-to-female oppression
occur across class lines?  I see it as parallel in many respects to
national liberation struggle, where cross class alliances must be built to
break the power of the hegemon, and where organizing space must be made for
the oppressed group to establish its own independent power base and
identity, just as the working class struggle in each nation must establish
its own power base and identity.  This shit is complicated, but we have to
embrace the complexity, or we detach from reality.***

All that said, I'll defend the dialectic, not in the formulaic guise that
Engels described it, but in its more general characteristics, as an
interpretive tool.  Dialectical reasoning is a departure from "analytical"
reasoning.  It attends to process and relations, and is essentially
synthetic.  To me, it seems the opposite of determinism.  Certainly it can
be updated from a strictly Hegelian method, by incorporating the insights
of complexity/chaos theory.

To give the hirsute on his due, he had but one lifetime, and in that
lifetime, he did not enter into therapy to identify his gender conflicts.
He established a tremendous body of work that advanced a quantum leap our
understanding of social development.  In fact, Nancy C. M. Hartsock, in
"Money, Sex, and Power" shows how Marx reversed the dominant perspective by
standing on production instead of exchange, then she shows how the next
step is to go further into the base, and describe social development from
the position of social reproduction.  Hartsock is a marxist-feminist.  She
has used the marxist method to move beyond the specific insights of Marx,
which were concentrated at the end of his day not on giving us some formula
for revolution, but on describing capitalism.  That description is still
essential.  July 2002 is a good time to go back and study Volume 3 of
Capital, because it is proving prescient.  Marx himself was growing every
more interested in questions we would categorize as ecological, when his
addiction to tobacco finally overook him and claimed his life.

I would say "amen" to the comrade who suggests the July/August 1998 Monthly
Review on Agriculture, Food, and Ecology.

I would also say amen to "Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale," by
Maria Mies, "Towards a Feminist Theory of the State," by Catherine
McKinnon, "Women, History, and Theory," by Joan Kelly, and "Sisters,
Comrades," by Kjersti Ericsson.  Do I agree with everything in these books,
no.  Are there valuable critiques that can not be overlooked, yes.  I am
re-reading/studying "The New Imperialism," by Robert Biehl, and it
dovetails with the aforementioned feminist writers, in seeking a more
detailed and coherent account of capitalist development than the one
available in the 19th C.  It demonstrates the fundamentality of racism,
patriarchy, and ecocide to capitalist development, and shows the relations
between patriarchy's development and reformulation, and the
development/reformulation of imperialism.  It also attends to Nancy's
questions about "primitive accumulation" and its relation to women's unpaid
work, as do Mies and Ericsson at some length.

Anyway, gotta go.  My daughter needs her ride to summer school, and the
bills are waiting.

I would also suggest "Sex is Not  Natural Act," by Leonore Tiefer, for a
great critique of biological determinism.  Just overlook the pomo
shortcomings of this one.  The critique itself is pure gold.



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