Why the Taliban hate women...

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Wed Nov 7 20:20:01 PST 2001


Gordon:
> >>If socialism means "the ownership or control of the means of
> >>production by the workers, or by the people generally", it
> >>certainly starts with (economic) class. If it doesn't mean
> >>this, what does it mean?

Kelley wrote:
> >whathefuckever! if you can't figure out what i was saying, as long
> >as you've been on lists, then i can only conclude that you're aren't
> >as smart as i thought you were or you're trolling. not to mention
> >that you're subscribed to a list that has as its mission an attempt
> >to get over the economism of traditional marxism... ! i'll go with
> >the latter as an explanation for this question. in the meantime,
> >consider the way joanna worte that sentence: she very nearly
> >apologizes for being concerned with gender issues and not just class
> >issues. please. i mean, she seriously thought she might not be
> >considered a socialist if she concerned herself with such matters.

Doug Henwood:
> Weird, Gordon. It's as if you're saying gender has no bearing on
> access to the means of production, or one's place in the division of
> labor.

_I_ didn't say that. I'm just pointing out how a rather traditional definition of socialism looks to me -- so that the now elided previous remark about putting class first seemed normal in persons defining themselves as socialist.
>From the above, it looks to me like "socialist" is being
used even more vaguely than "fascist", and that's going some.

(_My_ (irrelevant) analysis starts with will and power and ends up with anarchism, so I see class (oppression) and gender (oppression) as resonances of the _political_ fact of slavery. But this shouldn't matter to the meaning of socialism to socialists -- it's a different neck of the woods.)

-- Gordon



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list