Marxism and determinism etc.

[nancybrumback@xxxxxx]

Marxism and Determinism/Women /Accumulation (Bon Moun/Nancy)
ï   To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ï   Subject: Marxism and Determinism/Women /Accumulation (Bon Moun/Nancy)
ï   From: "Mohammad J Alam" <alam.m@xxxxxxx>
ï   Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 02:11:37 -0400
<<Bashing Marx with the aid of 150 years of projected, retrospective
historical bias has become somewhat fashionable it seems.>>

Conceivable, can marx be critiqued with simultaneous
bashing? No bashing intended, and none delivered in my opinion. If
you interpreted my comments as bashing, then you might want to look
at that.

âThe difference between producing goods and services with industrial, human,
and physical capital, and the act of raising and nurturing a child is hard
to miss. Labor as commodity-production, as man molding his external
environment to create commodities, is not the same as giving birth and
raising children.â

Yes, the difference is hard to miss so long as you are looking for a
hierarchy of labor. If women donât perform labor to mold the external
environment, what do they do? What is cleaning the house, cooking the
meals, etc.?? And the children who are thereby raised are the commodity
produced â the one commodity upon which the production of all other
commodities depends â the worker.

<<One is hard pressed to find more pathetic a caricature of Marxist
dialectics. Our sage discovers "people have the ability to make choices for
themselves"--impressive. Marxism does not view humans as automotons, it
only locates their activities in the economic and social auspices under
which they are carried out.>>

No, I donât believe that marx views humans as automatons; only that some
Marxists do.

<<<"A thing turns into its opposite and nothing else, ever?">>>

<<The key is to identify the
pattern, direction, and development of various tendencies, and point out
the source of conflict and its resolution--ie. labor and capital,
proletarian and capitalist, native and colonizer.>>

hm. I notice that all of your examples are exact opposites of one another.

"In fact, I think that "primitive accumulation" may be at least partly
based on all this unpaid wealth which nevertheless winds up into the
capitalists' bank accounts once it gets sucked into the productive
process".

<<What is the useful, politically applicable path one can trace from this
"conclusion"? Should we stop rearing children, mowing lawns, cleaning
dishes, and raking yards--all as "unpaid labor"--as a "strike" against
capitalism? This kind of moralism identifies absolutely no agent of change
and no cataclysm to spark it.>>

The majority of the people are the only agent of change and the only
cataclysm is the failure of capitalism to provide for their needs.

"No revolutionary theory that consistently demotes the emancipation of half
the planet's population to a "woman question" deserves to be followed by
that half of the population, and it won't.  Not any more.  There is a very
good reason why many feminists still hold marxism at arms length."

<<It is not at all clear how it is those who base themselves on a class
analysis--Marxism--view the world as "a woman question".>>

Iâm not sure what youâre saying here, but no, it is not at all clear why
Marxists have adopted the term âthe woman questionâ in regard to the
emancipation of more than half the worldâs population.

I do not expect anyone on this list to agree with any of my comments
about marx and women. I know that careful thinkers will need much more
than a few unsupported claims. I have been working on these questions
for more than 20 years, and I havenât completed my study. But maybe
I will complete it within the next few years, or at least some part of
it, and if I do, I will certainly publish it to the web and let the
list know.

In the meantime, I want to thank very much the comrades who have
expressed common cause with some of my concerns. I have found your
support most exciting and your suggestions for reading are most
welcome. I was so very surprised to find a comrade quote Maria Mies
back to me I could hardly believe it! I have felt very alone in my
project to integrate Marxism within a feminist paradigm. I have not
found many writers who have elaborated a feminist materialist position
except for Mies, Vandana Shiva, and a few others. I hardly ever discuss
politics with anyone anymore because both women and marxists find me
heretical or adopt a patronizing tolerance. So I am delighted to have
found this list and the revolutionists on it who are gracious enough
to share their ideas in a comradely manner.

On with the revolution!

nancy


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