reparations & exploitation

[Dennis Breslin]

Justin Schwartz wrote:
> 
> The questions Yoshie raises are very difficult; my inability to answer them
> to my satisfaction is one reason I was unable to finish a publishable
> version of an analysis of domestic labor. I agree that men are not a class.
> The exploitative relation between men as a group and women as a group, which
> is statistically real, is not as definitionally tight as that between
> capitalists and workers. And yet it _is_ real. The Second Shift is an
> uncompensated transfer of labor from women to men. Not all men benefit, and
> not all women participate. But most doa nd have for most of history.
> 
And the skill and precision with which she is making her argument is
is irritating precisely because she's nailed down both a powerful
benchmark defining exploitiation and grounded its significance in
her and othes constant reminders of the long-term costs to those
subjected to the exploitation under capitalism.  Damn, she's good
and her facility with social theory generally humbles me...

But, and there always is one in the end, I wonder if the power
of that benchmark itself isn't part of the problem so that in
order for a social relationship to involve exploitation is must
be by its very nature a complete contradiction.  Perhaps the
theory that needs developing is one that specifies the conditions
under which exploitation can occur between parties to a 
relationship.  Why does oppression occur at all?  And in 
answering that, maybe there'll be an answer to what price freedom?

DB