"The older tradition that was destroyed was instead that women should be able to survive without selling their labor to the capitalists, that a family should be possible with just one income, and that none of the work required to maintain a family should need to be outsourced to domestic servants."
Question: What do you mean by "women should be able to survive without selling their labor to the capitalists"? What would that look like, or how do you envision it?
Silvia Federici has done quite a lot of work on this question. Particularly fascinating is the way that she showed how women actually had more economic independence in pre-capitalist (and non-capitalist) societies because of access to the The Commons in Europe and other cultural arrangements in tribal and other societies outside of Europe.
What that looked like specifically was that a woman not only didn't need to sell her labor for wages but also didn't need to attach herself to a man in order to survive.
Her work shows that the witch hunts in Europe were part of the process of creating the "proletariat" in Europe by breaking the economic independence of women and the cultural norms that helped sustain it. Vestiges of that culture still remained even through capitalism, which is why men and children were the first to be turned into factory laborers while women were seen as cultural "off limits" for such exploitation.
Unfortunately, that cultural prohibition soon became perverted into the idea that women were 'too fragile' or 'too lazy' to be forced into such labor (look at the bodies of pre-capitalist peasant women and you'll find the opposite: they were often physically stout, with massive bones indicating they carried astounding amounts of muscle mass).
Despite that perversion of the prohibition, the prohibition remained. However, having no access to land themselves anymore, women then had no choice but to attach themselves to men in order to economically survive, a situation that they were "liberated from" by agreeing to be exploited by capitalists (who, were of course, also men...).
So what could this all look like instead? If we're looking at state solutions, the European countries that provide full economic benefits for mothers are one step (and the paltry welfare programs for single mothers in the United States, which Bill Clinton actually dismantled).
But imagining past the state, communal systems of child raising and "reproductive work" (Federici's meaning of reproduction: all the labor that goes into actually living, rather than working for others) are likely better ideas and free women into being able to choose their relationships, rather than being compelled into them or into staying in them just to feed themselves and their children.
I recommend two works by Federici, by the way. The first is the very short tract "Wages Against Housework," which is a brief outline of what Marxist feminists stand for as opposed to liberal and woke feminists. The other is of course her incredible book, Caliban & The Witch. Both are available online for free with a quick search.
I wish I'd known about Federicci's work when I left the "workforce" 11 years ago to raise my son (and my subsequent two other sons). My job was unsatisfying and I wasn't happy with the value tradeoffs of sitting at a desk all day doing almost nothing, and certainly nothing of importance, for money, while paying money for someone else to care for my child. It was a financial stretch by quite a lot, but we made it work.
I of course also had to deal with feeling like a "bad feminist" for being happy with my choice. And I even wondered IF I was truly happy with my choice. But I can say now absolutely I am. Parents who stay at home have to create their own value internally because we're not getting it from the culture as a whole. In a couple of years when my youngest goes to school, I'm rejoining the "workforce" but in a role I have chosen for its meaning to me, not because I have to do it to survive.
I do not know though if you would like to hear the painful story of my great grandmother. Many women were trapped in highly abusive relationships, and to leave meant either death or being shunned.
I am so beyond happy you're writing this book. I've been noticing this creeping of intersectionality and wokeness replacing previous class-analysis for a solid decade now, but nobody listened.
I love this line: " the poor are being “liberated” from making common cause together against the capitalists and instead having their lives narrated by identity struggle."
Yes! Whoever decided that all our lives can be narrated by identity-struggle? I tell you who: marketers. This is where these ideas originate from.
Yes. I remember trying to wrap my head around how "millennial" became a political category despite how it was a term created by a demographic marketing firm. Everyone forgot that and instead adopted it as a woke identity category and had arguments about it like it was somehow some doctrinal truth.
Thank you, thank you. If you need any frontline history from 1970-2010 from an emerging TERF who saw too much and could speak to no one about it, do not hesitate to contact me.
Actually, I should say 2014, as that was when I first experienced the Trans maniacs attempting to deplatform someone who was presenting on stage at a San Francisco forum. That person was Derrick Jensen.
I had gone through about 14 years or more of health issues and dying parents, and sociopathic siblings, so this was one of my first outings of this kind during that period except I did do a OWS event for several weeks that ended in hospitalization within weeks after returning.
I had never had privilege of being exposed to to Derrick. I had walked away from his first book. I was very impressed. After that, I found a place to talk about all those repressed and suppressed memories needing the light of day!!!
Boom and bust, war and peace, are all events where capital can move up to fewer and fewer at the top while draining the lower half. Stability and sustainability has never been their goal.
Not written for the High School graduate, or less educated, but impressive in its insights.
A long way of suggesting that the Neoliberal strategy of single issue and identity politics in dividing and neutralizing the Left in general, and those politically active in particular, is working. Bullshit still baffles brains, and people like Obama, Biden and even Sanders continue to get elected by well meaning folks because this isn't politics and hasn't been for several centuries. Enlightenment brought with it the right perspectives for freedom and new ways of governing, but got hijacked somewhere along the way to become an extension of Aristocratic Feudalism, substituting a new egalitarian breed of Aristocrat... of Wealth.
The public's weakness for materialism has proved its Achilles Heel, and until the 'average' person sees their prospects as poor to poverty, there will be no taste among Americans for the risks of revolution. And revolution is what it will take to unseat the con game of Capitalism.
"The older tradition that was destroyed was instead that women should be able to survive without selling their labor to the capitalists, that a family should be possible with just one income, and that none of the work required to maintain a family should need to be outsourced to domestic servants."
Question: What do you mean by "women should be able to survive without selling their labor to the capitalists"? What would that look like, or how do you envision it?
Silvia Federici has done quite a lot of work on this question. Particularly fascinating is the way that she showed how women actually had more economic independence in pre-capitalist (and non-capitalist) societies because of access to the The Commons in Europe and other cultural arrangements in tribal and other societies outside of Europe.
What that looked like specifically was that a woman not only didn't need to sell her labor for wages but also didn't need to attach herself to a man in order to survive.
Her work shows that the witch hunts in Europe were part of the process of creating the "proletariat" in Europe by breaking the economic independence of women and the cultural norms that helped sustain it. Vestiges of that culture still remained even through capitalism, which is why men and children were the first to be turned into factory laborers while women were seen as cultural "off limits" for such exploitation.
Unfortunately, that cultural prohibition soon became perverted into the idea that women were 'too fragile' or 'too lazy' to be forced into such labor (look at the bodies of pre-capitalist peasant women and you'll find the opposite: they were often physically stout, with massive bones indicating they carried astounding amounts of muscle mass).
Despite that perversion of the prohibition, the prohibition remained. However, having no access to land themselves anymore, women then had no choice but to attach themselves to men in order to economically survive, a situation that they were "liberated from" by agreeing to be exploited by capitalists (who, were of course, also men...).
So what could this all look like instead? If we're looking at state solutions, the European countries that provide full economic benefits for mothers are one step (and the paltry welfare programs for single mothers in the United States, which Bill Clinton actually dismantled).
But imagining past the state, communal systems of child raising and "reproductive work" (Federici's meaning of reproduction: all the labor that goes into actually living, rather than working for others) are likely better ideas and free women into being able to choose their relationships, rather than being compelled into them or into staying in them just to feed themselves and their children.
I recommend two works by Federici, by the way. The first is the very short tract "Wages Against Housework," which is a brief outline of what Marxist feminists stand for as opposed to liberal and woke feminists. The other is of course her incredible book, Caliban & The Witch. Both are available online for free with a quick search.
Thank you, I will definitely look into her work.
I wish I'd known about Federicci's work when I left the "workforce" 11 years ago to raise my son (and my subsequent two other sons). My job was unsatisfying and I wasn't happy with the value tradeoffs of sitting at a desk all day doing almost nothing, and certainly nothing of importance, for money, while paying money for someone else to care for my child. It was a financial stretch by quite a lot, but we made it work.
I of course also had to deal with feeling like a "bad feminist" for being happy with my choice. And I even wondered IF I was truly happy with my choice. But I can say now absolutely I am. Parents who stay at home have to create their own value internally because we're not getting it from the culture as a whole. In a couple of years when my youngest goes to school, I'm rejoining the "workforce" but in a role I have chosen for its meaning to me, not because I have to do it to survive.
I do not know though if you would like to hear the painful story of my great grandmother. Many women were trapped in highly abusive relationships, and to leave meant either death or being shunned.
Somewhere here are the clues as to why women invented farming and beer!
I am so beyond happy you're writing this book. I've been noticing this creeping of intersectionality and wokeness replacing previous class-analysis for a solid decade now, but nobody listened.
I love this line: " the poor are being “liberated” from making common cause together against the capitalists and instead having their lives narrated by identity struggle."
Yes! Whoever decided that all our lives can be narrated by identity-struggle? I tell you who: marketers. This is where these ideas originate from.
Yes. I remember trying to wrap my head around how "millennial" became a political category despite how it was a term created by a demographic marketing firm. Everyone forgot that and instead adopted it as a woke identity category and had arguments about it like it was somehow some doctrinal truth.
Thank you, thank you. If you need any frontline history from 1970-2010 from an emerging TERF who saw too much and could speak to no one about it, do not hesitate to contact me.
Actually, I should say 2014, as that was when I first experienced the Trans maniacs attempting to deplatform someone who was presenting on stage at a San Francisco forum. That person was Derrick Jensen.
I had gone through about 14 years or more of health issues and dying parents, and sociopathic siblings, so this was one of my first outings of this kind during that period except I did do a OWS event for several weeks that ended in hospitalization within weeks after returning.
I had never had privilege of being exposed to to Derrick. I had walked away from his first book. I was very impressed. After that, I found a place to talk about all those repressed and suppressed memories needing the light of day!!!
Boom and bust, war and peace, are all events where capital can move up to fewer and fewer at the top while draining the lower half. Stability and sustainability has never been their goal.
Jessie Bernard wrote her ground breaking book in 1972. I suspect Silvia might have built on that. Greer seems to have had her radar in a similar zone.
Good news. Dead at 80: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Thorstad
Not written for the High School graduate, or less educated, but impressive in its insights.
A long way of suggesting that the Neoliberal strategy of single issue and identity politics in dividing and neutralizing the Left in general, and those politically active in particular, is working. Bullshit still baffles brains, and people like Obama, Biden and even Sanders continue to get elected by well meaning folks because this isn't politics and hasn't been for several centuries. Enlightenment brought with it the right perspectives for freedom and new ways of governing, but got hijacked somewhere along the way to become an extension of Aristocratic Feudalism, substituting a new egalitarian breed of Aristocrat... of Wealth.
The public's weakness for materialism has proved its Achilles Heel, and until the 'average' person sees their prospects as poor to poverty, there will be no taste among Americans for the risks of revolution. And revolution is what it will take to unseat the con game of Capitalism.