Re: NOW and Marxism

[viveka <kaliyuga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[ quote snip ]


Lou wrote...

>Six years ago the nearly all female and minority clerical
> work force at Barnard College, organized by the UAW, went on strike
> after the administration demanded cutbacks in their medical benefits.
> The President of Barnard College is Judith Shapiro, a leading feminist
> theorist, forced these women out on the picket line for more than six
> months in one of the city's most visible labor struggles. The school,
> which is staffed heavily with feminist veterans, found few willing to
> take the side of the strikers who sat out in front of Barnard's gates
> with their children on a daily basis.
>

Some weeks back, there was a similar discussion re gender v. class, and
someone posted that "class trumps gender every time."  The above is quite
illustrative of that point.  Given the choice of siding with their gender or
their class, the decision of these educated upwardly mobile women to side
with their class was a no-brainer.  The same might be said of black middle
class folks that have made entry into the white world, who distance
themselves from their black "brothers and sisters" in the streets.

My own observations about the workplace is that lines are drawn first along
class, with, certainly, men getting the lion's share within each sphere.  To
focus one's efforts on increasing the proportion of women withIN each sphere
does little to move us forward toward a classless society.  Alexandra
Kollantai argued this almost 100 years ago and it is unfortunate that we
have to continue to debate this.

And, yes, children benefit by interaction with more than one adult.  But why
should that exposure be limited to the adults in the nuclear family?  I
heard recently that it is the uncle that is the disciplinarian in Hopi
families, not the father.  And while one might take issue with this
solution, and I acknowledge such a solution requires a now nearly defunct
locally available extended family, it does beg the question of who is
responsible for bringing forward the new generation.  To rely exclusively on
"mother and father" is the most reactionary and isolating solution one could
imagine, but typical of a society that subsumes all social responsibility to
the individual.

Tamara Bunke


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