You keep ignoring what I actually said,* which clearly spelled out that the end of de jure discriminations is _a gain in so far as it removes legal obstacles to class solidarity_. The question is how we can win culture wars in such a way that we make use of this advantage.
That raises further questions, such as what kind of feminism do we need, especially after the end of de jure discrimination?
* <http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/10/freedom-equality-property-and-bentham.html> Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For the working class, the question is how we can win culture wars in such a way that we can make use of the advantages that victories in culture wars bring -- de jure elimination of obstacles to class unity -- while coping with disadvantages that arise from destructions of old units of working-class survival and resistance. Only by doing so can we propose an alternative to both plain and simple reaction to the atomizing power of capitalism on one hand and the new spirit of capitalism that exploits it at working-class expense.
So far, leftists have been unable to answer this question in practice if not in theory.
On 10/8/07, Lenin's Tomb <leninstombblog at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > If men have been enjoying unearned privileges of patriarchy, it's
> > going to be hard to reverse that without bringing some of them down,
> > isn't it?
>
> On the other hand, if male workers haven't been 'enjoying unearned
> privileges', but rather are being exploited by the capitalist class, then it
> makes perfect sense that capital would try to incorporate a feminist
> flavour to the extent that there is a demand for it, and - rather than
> allowing it to eat into their own profits etc simply force male workers
> to accept shittier conditions.
Regarding racism, it makes sense to distinguish ruling-class racism and working-class racism. While ruling-class and working-class racisms have some elements in common, their causes and consequences are different. Ruling-class racism arises from the desire to hold onto class power and the need to divide and conquer. Working-class racism, in contrast, arises from being subjected to competition that workers, not without a reason, perceive as a zero-sum game, in so far as jobs, especially good jobs, are always scarcer than workers seeking them under capitalism. So, how we respond to them can't be exactly the same for both.
Did white male workers benefit from de jure discrimination? Yes and no. On one hand, the ability to exclude women, Blacks, and others limited job competition, giving them short-term benefits; on the other hand, regional comparison reveals that white male workers, too, earned lower wages in the South where racism, sexism, etc. were stronger than in the rest of the USA. So, the reality was that white men, over time, lost out to capital over all ironically by virtue of their ability to extract short-term advantages relative to women, Blacks, etc. in their particular trades, industries, and/or locations. Indeed, even after the end of de jure discrimination, the regional disparity has remained, helping capital bust unions by avoiding less racist and more unionized regions and investing more in the South.
> On the other hand, however, I think Yoshie is closer to describing
> contemporary capitalist ideology than the actuality of capitalist
> practise, in which it remains the case that the working class is
> stratified according to race and gender, so that women are
> educated for and apply for and accept the least empowering
> roles with the least financial reward.
Liberalism emphasizing equality of opportunity and excluding equality of outcome precludes obvious remedies for de facto social and economic inequality. That's not just ideology but also the law here.
On 10/8/07, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> Social atomization is a very real phenomenon that
> cannot simply be wished away.
It is especially an intractable problem in the USA above all. When Americans volunteer for a cause at all, they do so for their religious organizations, as Wojtek's posting on CPS data shows (see <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20071001/019012.html>).
Secular leftists, more atomized than ever, have not provided an effective antidote to atomization. What's our solution?
On 10/8/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > The reason why Yoshie spends so much of her time trying to argue
> > American
> > left-wingers out of easy assumptions is that much of what passes for
> > commentary on Iran in Western leftist discourse is organised around a
> > prurient obsession with the regime's sumptuary laws.
>
> You, like her, assert this without really offering any evidence. I
> don't see many American left-wingers obsessing over Iranian social
> policy. Most attention paid to Iran on the American left is about
> trying to stop the Bush administration from launching an attack on
> the country. We do have bloggers like Doug Ireland going on about
> Iranian persecution of same-sexers, but we also have people like my
> friend Richard Kim of The Nation criticizing Ireland's work. Here's
> Richard on the gay teens controversy:
>
> <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050815/kim>
> "What's worth exploring is how our perception of the case has been
> refracted through the prism of ideological debates over the nature
> and danger of radical Islam, and how assumptions about the 'clash of
> civilizations' that supposedly pits enlightened, secular, humane
> Western society against backward, theocratic, oppressive Islamic
> society seem to have impaired our ability to get the facts straight.
> The story also reveals much about the challenge of pursuing gay and
> human rights in a political climate infused by the US-led global 'war
> on terror,' anxiety over the recent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
> as president of Iran and growing fears about Islamic fundamentalism,
> particularly in Europe, in the wake of the London bombings last month."
Having read Richard Kim, you continued to claim that "Iran executes another queer" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-November/022698.html>). And it looks like ideological repetitions to which you have contributed have paid off: at Columbia, one of the question _assumed as a fact_ that Iran's government executes men for being homosexuals: "QUESTION: Mr. President, another student asks -- Iranian women are now denied basic human rights and your government has imposed draconian punishments, including execution on Iranian citizens who are homosexuals" ("President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University," CQ Transcripts Wire, 24 September 2007, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/24/AR2007092401042_pf.html>).
That is doxa today.
> > I think Chris Harman's pamphlet on Political Islam is far more
> > nuanced than
> > you may realise, however I don't see how this impacts on the present
> > argument, except indirectly.
>
> I read the damn thing, and I'm aware of its "nuance." It offers a
> very interesting class analysis of the rise of political Islam, which
> neither you nor YF show much interest in.
I don't think that you understand the "nuance" in question there. All you say is that, well, it's petit-bourgeois populism. In short, you end at the point where we start off. -- Yoshie