Re: value and gender - reply to Jim

[Jurriaan Bendien <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, indeed, a "clean rifle" is a necessary condition to prevent a misfire.
But the PEN is mightier than the SWORD, and one cannot very well go along
with filthy, hypocritical, patronising and pharisaic biological racists who
parasitize and exploit human weakness, murdering human development, and then
presume to prosytilise to all and sundry with lectures on cleanliness, or go
along with bourgeois apostles of "hygiene" who regard the despoilation of
the environment as an "externality" and thus miss the trees for the wood,
condemning the poor to live in a filthy hell while clean air is the province
of the rich. So-called ''dirt" is a political issue, just as sex is, since
"we want dirt where it promotes our interests, and expel it where it hinders
our interests", and hence we seek to define a concept of dirt in such a way,
that it promotes our interests,and does not confuse morality with the
findings of medical science, without a shred of concession to those who
would legislate the distinction without any profound curiosity or human
sympathy. "We will be victorious if we have not forgotten how to learn."
(Rosa Luxemburg), and we never learn anything if we do not question
authority, even if the "authority" happens to be an "authority on dirt".
Charlotte P. Gillman, to whom Yoshie refers, said that "The labour of women
in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they
otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But
so are horses." Only a miserable middleclass philistine could contrive the
idea this the problem is resolved by changing the horses that propel the
carriage, and thereby misrepresent the issue.

Likewise, for example, it is clear to anyone possessing the rudiments of
logic that the concept of a "weed" is relative, because what is a weed in
one place, is a crop in another. A professional archivist is deeply aware
that "things must have their correct place" and if by any chance some prying
busy-body who considers himself an expert on things outside his aegis of
experience, takes it upon himself to re-order a collection without the
archivist's consent, because with his tiny cognitive apparatus or paranoid
fantasies he fails to recognise the reasoning and intention behind the
arrangements which the archivist created thoughtfully by his work, then he
defiles and corrupts the collection, and pollutes constructive activity,
causing an imbalance which disturbs the harmony of the task. What would we
say of someone who would dab a jolt of paint on an original picture by
Rembrandt van Rijn on the ground that he felt that Rembrandt's composition
should be "improved", rather than express his "creativity" through altering
a copy of the painting purchased at his own expense ?

"(...) I mistrust sex theories expounded in articles, treatises, pamphlets,
etc. ¾ in short, the theories dealt with in that specific literature which
sprouts so luxuriantly on the dung heap of bourgeois society. (...)
questions of sex and marriage...dealt with from the point of view of mature,
vital historical materialism... [presuppose] wide-ranging, profound
knowledge, and the fullest Marxist mastery of a vast amount of material.
(...) As a Communist I have no liking at all for the 'glass-of-water'
theory, despite its attractive label: 'emancipation of love.' (...) The
domestic life of the woman is a daily sacrifice of self to a thousand
insignificant trifles. The ancient rights of her husband, her lord and
master, survive unnoticed. Objectively, his slave takes her revenge. Also in
concealed form. Her backwardness and her lack of understanding for her
husband's revolutionary ideals act as a drag on his fighting spirit, on his
determination to fight. They are like tiny worms, gnawing and undermining
imperceptibly, slowly but surely. (...)
Source: http://www.maoism.org/misc/women/Zetkin.htm

"As a rule [Trotsky] did not work less than twelve hours a day, and
sometimes, when it was necessary, much more. He remained at table as briefly
as possible, and after sharing his meals for many years I could not say that
I ever noticed on his face any mark of enjoyment for what he ate or drank.
'Eating, dressing, all these miserable little things that have to be
repeated every day ... " he once said to me. He could find his only
diversion in great physical activity. Merely walking was scarcely a
relaxation."
Source:
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/heijen/works/trotsky.htm

Jurriaan