Doug
They are saying several rather contradictory things, as you would expect, but here is one of the recent responses on that list.
Carrol
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: L-I: Women, biology, history (was Re: Women and Lists (was Re:Solidarity & "Humanitarian" Imperialism (was Re: Yoshie's dearthoff Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 14:36:56 -0300 From: Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky <gorojovsky at inea.com.ar> Reply-To: leninist-international at buo319b.econ.utah.edu To: leninist-international at buo319b.econ.utah.edu
Carrol Cox, cleverly, discovered (no serendipity at all):
> Please read the entire subject line. It tells a tale. We (marxism,
> lbo, pen-l, and L-I) simply cannot keep a thread on women going.
> Humanitarian Imperialism is a vital subject, and I've had much to say
> about it in the past and will in the future. But I think the quick
> mutarion into something else of threads on
> women is a pretty good synecdoche for the status on the left (in
> practice and theory) of the "woman question."
But I think this is not the whole tale. The problem lies in that this is one of those situations where we encounter the social and historic structuring of general, not historical, determinations. This makes the issue quite thorny, since it must be carefully considered, and our general ideological formation tends to be centered upon the social and historic, not on its relationship with the natural determinations. Of course, this is not something privative of males, but it certainly works as a safety valve which ensures that certain relations of production are missed by the Marxist.
The ultimate material basis for gender distinction, as well as for racist discrimination, lies so to say _outside_ class struggle. Females and males are (in the same way as people who can be distinguished and "classified" by a set of somatic features) organically distinct beings, different enough for class struggle to have found some use in this distinction.
The difference between "genderism" and "racism" lies, however, in that while the somatic differences that a racist regime socially and politically rebuilds are not _structurally functional_ to the material process of construction of the social totality. Let us imagine a virtual experience: for analytical purposes only, let us assume that the "apartheid" thesis is valid. What do we have if we carry this thesis to its ultimate consequence? What we have is different sets of human beings separated by color distinctions. What would the consequence be of those different sets developing in strict and absolute separation? Well, we Marxists believe that color distinctions are absolutely independent of social history as such, that is that if each group of different skin coloration developed separately, history would run more or less along the same schema in the different sets of this hypothetical experiment. Color, height, and so on, are not directly incidental on the basic process of social history, which is, first and foremost, a tale of social reproduction.
But our species is a gendered species, and separating the species along this -also somatical- divide brings about a very different result, namely our extinction. From a biological point of view, humans are not even gendered, our species is marked by sexuality, by having "chosen" sexuality as our _natural_ reproductive mechanism.
Sexuality is one mechanism among many, which seems to have interesting evolutive advantages and seems to provide important checks against somatic degeneration through an enhanced flow of genetic material.
Thanks to sexuality, genes flow throughout the species, from individual to individual. The joke I posted yesterday on my cousin's grandson is an example: there is at least one human being on planet Earth whose genetic bank is ENRICHED by genes drawn from separate evolutive histories, histories that have developed in places biologically and ecologically as different as the Mediterranean, Ireland, Central Europe, and Polinesia (I leave South America aside, because a couple of generations are nothing in natural evolution)!
This consequence of sexuality is a resource in itself, and speaks well of this kind of reproductive mechanism. So that not only I feel we should keep it with us because it is fun (however, if we reproduced by another mechanism we would find it interesting in its own right!), but because it is very efficient as to the goals it "looks after", so to say.
Now, this particular kind of natural reproductive mechanism has, at least in the way our species has received it, a peculiarity: one half of the species is specialized in the production of eggs and in the physical protection of early stages of human life within their own bodies and even during the early stages of independent life of these organisms. These specialized members of our species are known as "females". Please note that FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF NATURAL REPRODUCTION this is the ONLY specialization, the POSITIVE determination of the male / female dialectics. There is no specialization in males (although embriologically the history runs exactly the other way round, we are all created females and males are differentiated as a specialized part of the community!) FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE WAY THE THING WORKS. Both males and females hold spermatic banks within themselves, both share the operation of exchange of genetic material during intercourse, but it is only females who can keep the succesful product of intercourse (embryos) protected from the environment up to delivery.
After delivery takes place, females still fulfill a specialized task, which is that of feeding the newborns. The ways this is done are summed up in the word "mammals", and they enhance the dialectic of males and females. This, in time, gave birth to a myriad related matters, such as the differentiation of sexuality and reproduction, the differentiation of sex and gender, and so on. But I will not comment on all of them now. I will still remain on the "production / reproduction" level of analysis here.
The above is all that we can adscribe to biology. Whatever happens with the social organization of our biological constitution is to be laid at the door of history, particularly at the door of the general organization of the mode of production.
It is usually forgotten in our considerations that the main production of a mode of production are human beings. And this seems to be the reason why we tend to "escape" reproduction analysis at the individual level, thus the sex and gender dialectics. But then, we let an essential determination of human life escape our grip. Because human reproduction is as much a part of social reproduction as bridge building is.
And, of course (surprise, surprise!), it is THE MAIN part, the one that generates the physical conveyors of social relations. Should we be amazed at the fact that this part of our life is the MOST HIDDEN ONE from the eyes of social scientists?
No matter what can be said against Engels's _Origin of family,,,_ his approach (which I think to have vaguely followed here) still remains as the first scientific observation of the _social meaning_ of human reproduction and sexual relations. Different social formations and modes of production imply different consequences for each half of the human species. Capitalism, in particular, has received from past modes of production, almost as an unexpected present, the possibility that the whole task of biological reproduction of human beings is ruled out of "economics". This implies that the most important productive task of all, the reproduction of the producers (and of exploiters, too) can be secluded into the private premises of atomistically isolated individuals, can be brought away from its PUBLIC domain into an enforced PRIVATE realm. Convenient, easily manageable, and cost- effective. Wonderful.
Economicist Marxism tends to adopt the same point of view (and it is my personal opinion that one of the greatest tragedies with the Stalinist kind of Marxism was its bureaucratic economicism), for the simple reason that what does not belong to the realm of "economic laws" can thus be subjected to the domination of "economic necessity". Thus, although the Russian revolution (and probably this is more true for the Chinese revolution, but I do not know enough on this case) desperately attempted to attain equality for both males and females, this was crushed during the Thermidorian period. Reified social relations are a curse for women, and reified social relations are the material basis for any kind of economicism, particularly for socialist economicism.
It wil not be until the socialization of the material needs of natural human reproduction are understood as _equally important as (and in fact part and parcel of)_ the socialization of the means of production (in the "strict" economicist sense) that the gender distinction between males and females will cease to be a "natural, abstract" determination in human life. In the case of a Third World country, for example, full and free acess to automated public laundry facilities are as important as collective ownership of blast furnaces or collective management of environment!
The passage from prehistory to history will imply the full grasping of the productive and reproductive process by the human species. The meaning of this mot d'ordre is debased, IMHO, when we exclude human reproduction from social reproduction.
Well, that is, I guess, just for starters.
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky gorojovsky at inea.com.ar
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