the problem with eco mystics (Shiva, Mies, etc)

Mathew Forstater forstate at levy.org
Sun Aug 30 16:52:19 PDT 1998


Rakesh- I only am familiar with Patriarchy and the Accumulation of Capital, so maybe that explains it, but how is Maria Mies an "eco mystic"? I don't agree with all of Mies' analysis, but it is a far cry from deep ecology nature feminism, no? -Mat

Rakesh Bhandari wrote:


> Just another reading note.In Peter Custers' new Accumulation and Women's
> Labour in Asian Economies (Zed), there is a critique of Mies for
> overestimating the extent of formal deproletarianization of women (how
> much labor is farmed out as piecework for housewives); of Shiva for
> completely mystifying women's precapitalist labour as purely subsistence
> based and life giving, as nature itself, and
> continuing the mystification of the class nature of the labor performed by
> a certain *class* of women into the present. There is also a discussion of
> the centrality of Japanese in the proletariat as vast reserve army of
> labor and a fascinating discussion of new production systems in terms of
> Marx's concept of the turnover time of capital.
> best, picardo garcia-rubinstein



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