Radfem 2013 and the MRAs

Do only women make handbags (and footballs and a number of other goods)?

Does anyone need Prada handbags? Under capitalism some women measure their success in Prada and Choos with no thought to the fact that some poor women are making these things at 50 cents an hour.

In response to Basil's question:
Oh TeiTetua don't you think we can aspire to having more than a life expectancy of 80?
Is that really the zenith of human achievement?

In a practical sense, average length of life is continuing to inch up (or whatever it does with the metric system). But if you mean some equivalent to "Give us bread but give us roses" then under Marxism, it can be a problem.

You have to put in a request at the motor pool, and you can be sure private errands get the lowest priority. But if you're lucky, you can drive out to State Flower Farm Number 7, and they'll look up in their order book to see what their quotas are for public displays and municipal celebrations, and if there are any roses left over, they'll give you some. Don't be greedy, comrade, there aren't enough for everyone to have an armful! But no money changes hands, that's for the poor devils toiling under the capitalist yoke. So then you can head home with your flowers and put them in a vase, if the State Water Authority hasn't had a breakdown.

With capitalism, you can go down to the florist and buy all the roses you want, as long as there's money in your pocket. It seems like an easier way of doing things.

Bubbles, Lenin was very radical for his generation wasn't he.

Erm......I can see what you are saying but I have to disagree to some extent. I see women as both a separate class and a class within other classes.

Globalisation/imperialism as set out in the classical marxist lit of lenin and Rosa luxemburg's time and detailed by them, still can't be proven to to be totally correct. The classical analysis seems to be that capitalism would spread into areas of the world which were pre-capitalist. So although they were correct in thinking that capitalism would export capital (finance) to other parts and that capitalism expands, there is still very uneven development even now. Not something which I think they realised might be the case.

What has happened is strange because it kind of mimics what has happened to women under capitalism. There is a dichotomy, women are needed to perform cheap labour but also in working for free within the home they save capitalists money but in many cases this work can be subcontracted to open up new areas of the market, micro meals, childcare, cleaners, oven cleaning, gardening, aged care etc,..so we are forced into the home, whilst also being forced out to work! There is no clear ideology coming at us on this.

What has happened is that capitalism has exploited pre-capitalist modes of production in undeveloped countries. So there is a tendency as with America to force open countries for investment and privatisation whilst also trying to suspend their development because there has to be "global" inequality, just as there must be inequality between individuals. Its fascinating. Reading this at the mo digamo.free.fr/brewer1990.pdf I have the book, but I think that PDF is actually the whole book and is the updated version & free I don't agree with some of it because I really think that the inequality is fundamental to capitalism. I agree with Marx's underconsumptionist theory. So you can't have a situation where there is any sort of equilibrium btw markets, nations or individuals.

Now then back to the discussion at hand.

(No need to answer Bubbles, just find a mirror and commence self-flagellation)

Bubbles, yes I was in. I don't beleive I've hidden that fact.

'BubblesOfBliss Mon 29-Apr-13 10:05:10

And lets not forget trafficking and prostituting women to 'service' men in the army bases. I once had a chat about this with a pretty high-ranking bloke in the army. It was so weird the way he saw the provision of prostitutes for the 'boys' to be essential and non-negotiable- it was absolutely de facto and freaked me out. To him it was like my suggestion soldiers shouldn't prostitute women was like me saying 2+2=5.'

Straight off that bat, if you are indeed talking about a British high-ranking bloke, you are lying.

Nobody in the last 100 years would think the 'provision of prostitutes' to be 'essential and non-negotiable'.

You haven't got a clue about anything to do with the Forces have you? I would ask yourself why you feel the need to denigrate better people than yourself.

Clearly Lazarus you are in/have been in the armed forces yourself, which is why it is a particular bee in your bonnet... BTW I never mentioned 'shipping in' - just his utter incredulity that I suggested that there could be an alternative to prostituting women.

Apologies Basil, I thought you were bubbles.

Either way, as it stands.

Besides you're at my table to Basil.

I've never claimed to be a grown up. They can continue their discussion whilst we play at the children's table.

Your claim, just to remind you, is that you talked to a high-ranking bloke in the Army, and he thought shipping in prostitutes to service the lads was ok, and that to not do it was like you saying 2+2=5....

Which Army and when. There are no issues of identifying him. Just X Army, Y years ago will suffice. If you feel like adding rank you can. Anything up to Colonel will hardly id him.

You put it out there, you back it up.

Thread's moved on now Laz, the grown-ups are talking, now run along, there's a dear.

BubblesOfBliss Wed 01-May-13 21:05:54

LazarussLozenge You seem to miss every point.

"Which Army was he in and when?"

Obviously I am going to keep this vague in order to avoid identifying factors.

I don't believe even the British Army is small enough that by stating 'X Army, 2 years ago' would pin point this high ranking officers that seems to think shipping in prostitutes for the 'boys' is ok.

So I'll ask again in more focused terms.

This high-ranking bloke in THE army who seems to think prostituting women is essential, in order to 'service' men which Army was he in?

Mini For me, globalisation is a practical reason I believe sex-class should be considered above social class. As you say "Wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands and this wealth is being built on the exploitation of women.", and I believe that in the same way that separate classes in a particular location are established by a series of male-violent raids of the population (then regrouping back at camp to share plunder- eventually becoming formalised into separate classes related by 'taxation'), 'nation-classes' are established in a similar way, so that in a sense any woman in the UK - even working class women -buying cheap goods in the UK built on the exploited labour of foreign women, has a relationship with those exploited women of being of the 'upper nation class' benefiting from their exploitation.

Poverty is created by capitalism, with women being 2/3rds the world workforce and 2/3rds the worlds poor. Wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands and this wealth is being built on the exploitation of women.

"The book is a return to this question and gives a fairly definitive answer: yes, but that means the ideas of feminism have to return to some of their roots, and have especially to integrate class and race if they are going to mean something more than a number of middle and upper class (mainly western) women gaining access to ?power? on the same basis as men" www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/book-reviews/6230-hester-eisenstein-feminism-seduced-how-global-elites-use-womens-labor-and-ideas-to-exploit-the-world

I won't be offended if you disagree with me TeiTetua but I can't take seriously opinion based on little more than prejudice.

Oh TeiTetua don't you think we can aspire to having more than a life expectancy of 80?

Is that really the zenith of human achievement?

I resolved not to be the first to challenge this Marxist stuff here, and I'm not going to get into an extended argument if there turns out to be one.

But really, in the present day Marxism is just an opiate for a different bunch of masses, something for people to believe in when they have a chronic desire to be discontented. Well-fed people who can look forward to a life expectancy of over 80, and who have free instantaneous worldwide communication at their fingertips, so they can tell everyone how awful it all is!

Added to which, I would say that women are the revolutionary class. Women went out of the street, they demanded bread, the men put down tools in the factories and joined them, that was the start of the revolution.

The same in Paris, women rioted for bread. French revolution.

In the Paris commune women fought alongside men, they organised and they had full participation in the democratic processes. www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/03/23/women-paris-commune

Also in the conversation between Lenin & Zetkin massively quoted on this thread, this (Lenin) sounds pretty progressive to me:

"?The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, children?s homes, educational institutes of all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at home. We have the most advanced protective laws for women workers in the world, and the officials of the organised workers carry them out. We are establishing maternity hospitals, homes for mothers and children, mothercraft clinics, organising lecture courses on child care, exhibitions teaching mothers how to look after themselves and their children, and similar things. We are making the most serious efforts to maintain women who are unemployed and unprovided for.

?We realise clearly that that is not very much, in comparison with the needs of the working women, that it is far from being all that is required for their real freedom. But still it is tremendous progress, as against conditions in tsarist-capitalist Russia. It is even a great deal compared with conditions in countries where capitalism still has a free hand. It is a good beginning in the right direction, and we shall develop it further. With all our energy, you may believe that. For every day of the existence of the Soviet State proves more clearly that we cannot go forward without the women.?

"Are people here actually saying Communism was 'great' for female liberation? Do you lot know anything about Communist Russia?"

I know a bit, not as much as I would like with limited time! I loathe Stalin and everything he stood for. I am in favour of communism.

One of the difficulties is in reclaiming the term. Because of Stalin it is quite a task.

What do people think are the main characteristics of capitalism? What do people think are the main characteristics of communism? because a lot of what is fed to us in our daily diet through education, media and from our peers is simply misleading. Just as we are socialised into gender roles, we are socialised and educated to accept a specific hegemonic concept of politics, economics and philosophy which supports the functioning of capitalism.

Thanks for the links Mini

Oh, just wanted to add that I think in view of the fact that the conditions need to be right on the ground before anything else can come out of capitalism, is that the work of feminists in advancing women's rights under capitalism also point the way to creating those conditions.

LazarussLozenge You seem to miss every point.

"Which Army was he in and when?"

Obviously I am going to keep this vague in order to avoid identifying factors.

"Are people here actually saying Communism was 'great' for female liberation? Do you lot know anything about Communist Russia?"

Where did people say that? We were discussing theory not implementation by the way- and we can all set up straw women like that, but most of us have better things to do.

When history is written by a ruling class, history as told the world over will always be different to "our" conception of history.

Do you know why your local newspapers filled with Russian and Eastern European marriage agencies after the fall of communism? Interesting read here: www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk/women/118-gender-inequality/186-women-the-russian-revolution-and-the-collpase-of-stalinism

www.bolshevik.org/1917/no7/no07wmru.html interesting read here, all of which I agree with.

"The Bolsheviks recognized that without qualitative economic development, the liberation of women was a utopian fantasy"

The fact is Marxists have always argued that capitalism is a necessary stage to the development of communism. Without the advances in technology and without raising the productive forces within society to an advanced degree, without having a "working class", without having a revolutionary "working class" struggle then we can not be at a reflexive point where we are ready to revolutionise. Russia didn't have a working class as such and hadn't even undergone an industrial revolution.

" In early 1924 a bureaucratic caste under Stalin came to dominate the Soviet Communist Party and state. Thus, the equality of women as envisioned by the Bolsheviks never fully came about. The Stalinist bureaucracy abandoned the fight for international revolution and so besmirched the great ideals of communism with bureaucratic distortions and lies that, in the end in 1991-92, the working class did not fight against the revolution?s undoing and the restoration of capitalism under Boris Yeltsin"

www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/emancipation.html

'BubblesOfBliss Mon 29-Apr-13 10:05:10

And lets not forget trafficking and prostituting women to 'service' men in the army bases. I once had a chat about this with a pretty high-ranking bloke in the army. It was so weird the way he saw the provision of prostitutes for the 'boys' to be essential and non-negotiable- it was absolutely de facto and freaked me out. To him it was like my suggestion soldiers shouldn't prostitute women was like me saying 2+2=5.'

Which Army was he in and when?

Are people here actually saying Communism was 'great' for female liberation? Do you lot know anything about Communist Russia? Or are Gulags, ok, now because they locked men and women up equally?

The Red Terror is pretty specific as to what it was and the millions who died in famine.

Yeah, but women's rights bloomed (apparently).