[lbo-talk] new spirit of capitalism

Lenin's Tomb leninstombblog at googlemail.com
Tue Oct 9 08:29:07 PDT 2007


On 10/9/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> I wouldn't entirely agree with this - some of the gains have been
> against discrimination in the labor market and access to credit and
> property ownership. So the material basis of gender inequality has
> been partly undermined.

Yeah, I agree.


> But I don't see all that much of a loss in


> that achievement, which you do, and Yoshie apparently more so. What's
> the counterfactual? Had there been no feminist movement the fight
> against capitalism would be in better shape? I doubt it. The
> capitalist restoration since the 1980s has come along with a backlash
> against feminism, no?

I also agree that there has been a severe backlash against feminism, especially in the United States - land of liberated women, free of the burlap sack - and I repeat that I think Yoshie describes capitalist ideology and culture more completely than current capitalist practise.

Counterfactual, though? Such a grubby word, such a grubby idea: almost always used for reactionary, dystopian purposes - it would almost always have been worse had things been otherwise. Suppose the feminist movement had been more fully revolutionary; suppose the 1960s generation was more oriented to the working class and less inclined to political adventurism; suppose most of the radicals had not been persuaded of the possibility of an anti-racist, anti-sexist, non-imperialist, liberal capitalism - well, I think we'd be in much better shape.



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