Yesterday I went to a “Mother’s March” here in Philadelphia, organized by Global Women’s Strike, on the occasion of International Women’s Day (March 8), which was established in 1911.
The Mother's March in San Francisco, March 8 2011.
The message of the march was “Invest in Caring, Not Killing,” and drew attention to the absurd budget cuts that our new Governor has proposed here in Pennsylvania, similar to what is going on in Wisconsin, as well as at the federal level as right-wing idealogues are given positions of power. The intention of these cuts appears to be to punish poor and working class families, especially women, for the failures of Wall St. So we see teacher’s unions under attack, as if teachers caused the stock market to crash?
Selma James, the author of the excellent article below, was founder of the Wages for Housework campaign in the 1970s, which brought attention to the fact that women’s labor is systematically unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued. The same message, of putting resources and value into the caring and nurturing work that upholds the entire society, rather than into destructive activities such as wars and bailouts for the rich, continues to motivate the Global Women’s Strike today.
Last week Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch, spoke in Philadelphia on many of these themes, and how the attack on women has been a key part of the structure of capitalism since its origin 500 years ago in the fires of the European witch burnings. Silvia’s work has opened my eyes to the ways in which capitalism is dependent on the division between (predominantly male) paid labor and (predominantly female) unpaid labor, which she calls the realms of production and reproduction. It turns out that capitalist profits could not be made if women’s labor was valued the same way as men’s – taking care of children, the elderly, and men’s emotions just isn’t very profitable, even though it is absolutely essential to society.
It’s also important to recognize that the unpaid labor holding up capitalism goes far beyond housework, to slavery, prison labor, the self-disciplining of the body, and the theft of resources and destruction of ecosystems that result from capitalist exploitation of Mother Earth.
I hope to upload the video or audio of Silvia’s inspiring events in the coming days. In the meantime, check out this article by Selma James.
alex
International Women’s Day: how rapidly things change
by Selma James
March 8, 2011
Originally published by The Guardian.
A century ago International Women’s Day was associated with peace, and women’s and girls’ sweated labour – which votes for women were to deal with. Not a celebration, but a mobilisation. And because it was born among factory workers, it had class, real class. Later it came to celebrate women’s autonomy, but changed its class base and lost its edge. This centenary must mark a new beginning.
We live in revolutionary times. We don’t need to be in North Africa or the Middle East to be infected by the hope of change. Enough to witness on TV the woman who, veiled in black from head to foot, led chants in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, routing sexism and Islamophobia in one unexpected blow. She and the millions moving together have shaken us from our provincialism, and shown us how rapidly things can change. Women in Egypt have called for a million women to occupy Tahrir Square today. Who would have predicted that a month ago?
Feminism has tended to narrow its concerns to what is unquestionably about women: abortion, childcare, rape, prostitution, pay equity. But that can separate us from a wider and deeper women’s movement. In Bahrain, for example, women lead the struggle for “jobs, housing, clean water, peace and justice” – as well as every demand we share.
The revolution is spreading. Scott Walker, the Tea Party’s state governor in Wisconsin, aims to destroy state workers’ collective bargaining rights. As in Britain, most employees and service users attacked by the cuts are women. A male colleague told demonstrators who had occupied the state capitol: “The administration made a calculation that the men would not support the women. Now they know otherwise.” He ended his speech with the phrase on everyone’s lips: “Fight like an Egyptian!”
Now we know the Tea Party is after women, what will women’s organisations do about it? The only one anywhere near is a long-time fighting network of welfare mothers. Wisconsin in the 90s led on “welfare reform” – the blueprint for UK cuts. Welfare mothers remember that few stood with them then.
It has not always been easy to pull up women’s neglected interests from beneath the “general cause”. The best way is to ask the women who often shout unheard: the single mothers, the teachers, the nurses, the sex workers, the care workers, the asylum seekers, the pensioners. But as feminists, our hearing and our focus are corrupted when we concentrate on getting women into the corridors of power. Recently the UK government warned big companies that they must “double the number of women in boardrooms” – while it increases the poverty of women and of children. Will we allow that? Or can we turn this around and demand the money from corporations and banks for women, children and all who need it?
Such a turnaround presumes a return of feminism to class. Not the restricted concepts of the 70s, but a new definition that begins with women internationally – from Bahrain to Palestine, from Haiti to Pakistan, where women fight for survival and justice after earthquakes, floods, coups and occupations.
How do we deal with the fact that our biology is an encumbrance for Alan Sugar, who wants to question women job applicants about their parental intentions? It’s even an embarrassment for some paid to represent us. When a trade union equality worker was asked to endorse our IWD event, she wrote back: “Is it just me – or [is] the ‘Mothers march’ banner … disturb[ing]?”
Many feminists have become convinced that we can only escape romanticised visions of maternal slavery by denying we are mothers at all. To be a financially independent individual as well as (or instead of) a mother, we have traded away the social power that comes from recognition of the contribution of motherhood – the making of the human race, the creation of the labour force. Marching as mothers we transform the attitude to that work: from a social liability to the social contribution that it is. In this way, we help put all women in a stronger position to demand wages and working conditions that take account of the caring work most of us are already doing, whether we’re mothers or not.
New boldness allows us to face what Marx and Engels called “our real conditions of life and our relations with our kind”. Women refusing to be trapped at home, and demanding that men not be trapped out of home, takes us immediately beyond the market, which only considers work that leads to profit for others, not to equity nor to happiness nor even to survival.
To undermine once and for all the sexual division of labour, we – women and men – must aim to work less. We can then begin where we all began, with children. What do they need? First of all, adults (not just parents) who love them and work to make a relationship with them. That is after all what caring is. We need time for this. Prime time.
We cannot be punished for our involvement in this civilising life process. Nor can we allow men to be excluded from it. So this International Women’s Day, we must at least consider claiming the money from banks and wars to pay for the society of carers that only we together can devise. Taking the lead of the women in Tahrir Square, we can change the world.
• Selma James is organiser of the Global Women’s Strike Mothers March
The End of Capitalism 
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March 14, 2011 at 2:25 am
Marie Marshall
On my blog site I have the words “Liberation is inclusive”. I believe that most sincerely. I do not believe that ‘capitalism is a form of patriarchy’ per se. Capitalism is a power system; all power systems concentrate power, and those who are powerful are also tenacious – they hold on to power. I believe that capitalism in fact has its roots in the pre-historic rise of agriculture; once the first farming unit had a surplus to sell, a ‘market’ existed based on supply and demand. Coincidentally, within recorded history, we have seen little other than male-dominated societies. But are they twin horns of the same beast? I would argue that they are not necessarily so, even though – inevitably – they affect (infect?) each other. Would a matriarchy conserve its power? Yes. Would a matriarchy have sold its first surplus? Yes. Capitalism and patriarchy may currently depend on each other, but the statement that one is somehow a form of the other is, to my mind, unproven and unsound.
I want to make two peripheral points. I live in a capitalist society. I have seen a marked change in the way workers have been treated, across the gender divide. Capitalism seems to have embraced (how ever superficially) the concept that women should receive equal pay and should have equal opportunities. Why? Not because it is fair and right, but for a very good capitalist reason – because it increases the supply of labour thereby reducing its basic cost, the law of ‘supply and demand’. When I point out to my fellow feminists that our ‘gains’ in workplace fairness have in fact forced down wages, I am often greeted with hostility, as though I have just told them that women have no place in the workplace. They don’t see the bigger picture. They have been ‘played’. Our own ‘gains’ have been subverted by capitalism and turned to its advantage. What is the real enemy here?
Secondly, this term ‘sex worker’. It’s a euphemism for ‘prostitute’. I know feminists don’t like hearing the word, but the brutality of that word – again to my mind – reinforces the ugly truth that there is a female underclass in that area. A female underclass is something I am not about to put up with, nor will I dress it up with a pretty name to hide under. Although it exists because, in a capitalist society which depends on exploitation, anything for which a market can be found WILL be exploited, whether legally or illegally, it also exists because we (society as a whole) have taken the easy way out and pandered to certain aspects of male sexuality instead of getting to grips with them, understanding them, and dealing with them. That is all part and parcel of liberation, folks.
March 23, 2011 at 5:46 pm
alex
thanks for commenting and leaving your smart ideas as always Marie!
i differ from some of the views you’ve expressed, mainly because of what I have been learning from writers like Silvia Federici and Maria Mies who have communicated the brilliant metaphor that capitalism has always been structured like an iceberg.
the visible part of the iceberg (economy) is commerce, wage labor, etc. but the great majority of the economy relies on unpaid and stolen labor and resources, including slave labor, prison labor, women’s housework, and theft of resources and land from communities and ecosystems. without that massive “free” labor and energy, capitalism would never have been born and could not exist. this is one of the fascinating themes of Maria Mies’ book “Capitalism and Accumulation on a World Scale,” which i am reading now.
Silvia Federici’s book “Caliban and the Witch” which I also reviewed (https://endofcapitalism.com/2009/11/05/who-were-the-witches-patriarchal-terror-and-the-creation-of-capitalism/) puts this into a historical perspective, highlighting the role that the African slave trade, the enclosures of the European small farmers, colonization and genocide in the New World, and the Witch Hunts against women all played in providing what Marx called the “primitive accumulation” necessary to launch capitalism. Federici differs from Marx in pointing out that these enclosures, these violent thefts of labor and resources, these attacks on women, etc., were not “primitive” because they have never ended, they have only shifted to new areas and new forms.
leading from this analysis is the recognition that capitalism has not become less sexist in recent decades, despite the women’s movement in the Global North. it has only shifted its attacks on women to new horizons. thus for example hundreds of thousands of women are being raped and killed in places like the Congo, and there are new Witch Hunts taking place in Africa and India. these are the new enclosures, and they are mandated not by what some call “backwards” cultures but by the global market itself, which demands cheap resources and goods (i.e. coltan in the Congo).
from such a definition of capitalism, the market is not itself the source of our despair, but only a way of organizing the violence which has always sustained patriarchy. for this reason i disagree with the analogy of the “first surplus” of agriculture and how this necessarily led to capitalism. it is important to keep in mind that the issue is not about “how much” production, but “what kind” and “for what”. there is no inevitable reason why a surplus of barley, for example, must necessarily lead to a militarized state. it could just as well lead to a party. the question is why do some societies choose military over fun, and this i think can only be understood through an analysis of patriarchy.
just as a counterexample, consider the “potlatch” Native American communities of the Pacific Northwest. before the Europeans destroyed their cultures, they were living in perpetual surplus. their land was very fertile, the forests provided far more resources than they could ever hope to consume. but instead of deciding to create a standing army to conquer their neighbors and found an empire, they decided to repeatedly destroy or give away a huge portion of resources, and in fact whoever destroyed the most surplus resources was considered wise and powerful enough to be their next chief.
anyway, my goal is not to start an argument but to clarify my own views in the hope that it proves helpful to you and others.
there is nothing inevitable about oppression. it is perpetually challenged and in question. i am glad to be a small link in what Alice Walker calls an endless chain of long-distance runners for social justice.
much love
alex
March 24, 2011 at 3:23 am
Marie Marshall
“just as a counterexample, consider the “potlatch” Native American communities of the Pacific Northwest.” But Alex, these are not the communities under discussion, and in any case there will always be exceptions to test any rule.
Agriculture as WE know it is believed to have started in the Middle East, whence it spread to Europe. Quite quickly, somewhere along the line, it became the first means of using ‘private property’ (land) to create unearned wealth. The odd potlatch here and there is a drop in the ocean compared to what corporate and state capitalism have become; both started in Europe, the inheritors of ME agriculture. I grant you that somewhere along the same time-frame patriarchal structures also developed – most likely springing from something as relatively harmless as the natural, biographical differences between the sexes, but warping and becoming institutionalised as societies became more complex and specialised. This does not make capitalism of itself patriarchal, although it is easy to assume that the existence of and merging of patriarchy and capitalism suggests so. I don’t think you answered either of my main points which were, firstly, would a matriarchy tend to concentrate and retain power, and secondly would a matriarchy have exploited its surplus, its ‘private property’. I know any answer would be speculative, but I see no clear evidence that they would not.
Would it be safer to say – yes, I think it would – that capitalism has at least BECOME patriarchal, and at a very early stage?
“there is nothing inevitable about oppression. it is perpetually challenged and in question.” I don’t want to sound pessimistic here, but look at what you have just said. If oppression is perpetually challenged then it is, at the very least, damnably resilient, or we wouldn’t have to perpetually challenge it! And I do!
One thing I challenge is the belief in ’causes’. I’m often defined (sometimes self-defined) as a feminist; but I’m a maverick, I like to buck trends, I like to question everything – in particular I like to question radical views before they become lazy and institutionalised in their own right. I have been a thorn in the side of Queen Bees and opinion-formers in every women’s group I ever joined. It is my belief that ‘feminism’ should not be some sort of separate ’cause’. ‘Causes’ are, to me, a symptom of the mistaken belief that piecemeal reform is possible and achievable. They aren’t. They are absorbed and adapted by Power and rendered of little effect. When Britain abolished the slave trade were the rich and powerful suddenly displaced? That’s just a single example. This is why I always say that liberation is total and inclusive.
I wish I had your opportunities to read more widely and indeed to write (maybe your blog here would suddenly cite ME!). No doubt I would find a lot more to challenge. As it is, I can’t rely on citing this author or that. I’m simply reading and citing my own heart and head.
March 28, 2011 at 5:57 am
Marie Marshall
Alex, I’m going to ask you to review critically another concept which you mention in your comment of 23rd March. I recognise that it is one which is central to ‘our’ way of thinking, but it is possibly (I believe) a negative which should be viewed as at the very least the basis of a positive.
I quote from you: “unpaid and stolen labor and resources”, in which you include “women’s housework”. As I said, I am familiar with the Marxist view of the value of labour, as opposed to the market/capitalist view of its price. I use the term ‘price’ deliberately; although the Newspeak of capitalist propaganda always talks of ‘value’ it actually means ‘price’, and its use of the former term subverts and suppresses the distinction between true value and ‘price’. ‘Price’ is surely the correct term for the monetary (or other exchange equivalent) quantum applied to a given commodity, based on the law of supply and demand. In a market economy, labour is seen as a commodity and is subjected to that law. When my fellow feminists, in the past, insisted on recognition of the traditional roles of housework by a monetary equivalent in order that it should have ‘equal value’ with the work done by people in paid employment, I argued then and there that what they were doing was surrendering it entirely to capitalism, acknowledging it as a commodity, and insisting not on a value but a price.
There is plenty of work which is done for nothing. A banal example is someone giving up free time to help in a charity shop. Is it appropriate to attempt to measure the ‘value’ of that work by the equivalent wages of a shop worker for the hours spent? To give what I consider is a better example, although a very minor one, if I see someone carrying two bags of heavy shopping and I offer to carry one for her, what I am doing is definitely work. it is unpaid, but it is definitely NOT stolen. Its value is not the equivalent in a porter’s wages for the time spent, its true value is social, its true value is in its worth as mutual aid.
The value of ‘unpaid’ housework, no matter who does it, no matter if it is done by a woman, or by a man, or by a partnership in some agreed or ad hoc proportion, or by a family unit, or by any communal unit, is not the equivalent in a domestic servant’s wages for the time spent. It’s value is – similar to the bag-carrying example – its importance in terms of mutual aid. To brand it “unpaid and stolen” is to accept a capitalist definition of it, even if one is supposedly opposing that definition; it is to degrade it and to ignore its vital, societal place in mutual aid.
If we are truly to embrace the mutuality implicit in the visions of, say, Kropotkin or Murray Bookchin, we are going to have to get our heads round the true value of various forms of work NOW, rather than continuing to think of them in terms of ‘market value’.
Just a thought.
M
April 8, 2011 at 10:49 am
Phil
Marie,
I agree whole-heartedly with what you’ve written here. Actually Engels describes quite succinctly the process whereby societies and governments formed around the “need” to keep the underclasses in check. Surely women were at that time (and still are in many places) part of the underclass, but so were many others. Often the underclasses were the native peoples who were conquered by aristocrats to secure in perpetuity a means of living without work. So it seems that patriarchy and capitalism found each other through a common root and have perpetuated themselves as power tends to do: violence disguised as altruism.
http://www.panarchy.org/engels/eng.1884.html
I appreciate your comment about supply and demand of labor. One way to subvert the existing hierarchy *is* to work for no money. Work done for free cannot be taxed and used to further oppression through military action, corporate subsidies, and other “investments” that support the powerful. Employment should not be viewed as an ends, but only a means for survival. Any opportunity to subvert it should be taken, and I think that labeling the problem as “patriarchy” is going to divide us rather than unite us. I don’t mean to say that patriarchy doesn’t exist, but merely to point out that it is not nearly the whole of it.
March 30, 2011 at 10:30 am
schwerpunktinternational
While I think that Feminism was a needed tool in labor – not discussion-based or theory but women taking to the streets and demanding rights – that continuing to see the fault of capitalism through this set of constructs is a little out-of-date – as are most of our progressive tools. We are – and I guess I mean “I” – at a time when we need the post-post-modern, to look not to paint pictures of “fat cats” with bags of money with the “$” sign on it, or to get distracted with fancy words and old tyme identity politics. As one comment above said, let’s not dress up ugly things with fancy words, and to that I add, let’s not point out the penis in what is an ugly ungendered system build by us all, and controling us all.