Patriarchy, Women

The Hammer in our Hamlets: Patriarchy on the Left Part 3 of 4

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by Eve Mitchell[1]

This is the third in a four-part series on Patriarchy on the Left.  This series is organized from the universal to the particular; it looks at large questions like “what is patriarchy?” in the first part and ends by discussing micro-level questions:  How do we deal with particular instances of patriarchy in our everyday organizing and political milieus?  What tools do we have to combat patriarchy on the left?  The first two pieces, looking at the totality of patriarchy, and the particular expressions of sexism within left communities, were co-written with Jocelyn Cohn, another member of Unity and Struggle.  This piece and the fourth installment of this project (written by Jocelyn Cohn individually) will look at specific methods for dealing with patriarchy on the left with some critiques and comments.

Links to associated articles:

No Lamps, No Candles, No More Light:  Patriarchy on the Left Part 1

No Safehouses: Patriarchy on the Left Part 2

hammer

Image Credit: Lita Box

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Crisis, Nationalism, White Populism

Morbid Symptoms: The Downward Spiral

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The following post is the second part in our notes on Trump. Part one can be found here. We’ll look at the limits and potentials of the forces arrayed against Trump in part three.

In our last post, we located the Trump regime within a global right wing resurgence enabled by capitalist crisis and the failures of social democracy. Now we can examine how this resurgence developed in the U.S. context. In this piece, we will explore how conservative hegemony emerged from the crisis of the 1970s, developed through the Reagan years and exhausted itself in the Obama era. We will then trace how Trump builds on the history of conservative hegemony even as he rends it in two, and outline the degree to which the incoming Trump regime stands to deepen authoritarianism.

For decades, the U.S. neoliberal elite legitimated falling wages and living standards by keeping the economy afloat with successive credit-fueled bubbles and playing on white racialist resentments. But this strategy began to collapse with the onset of the Great Recession, after years of erosion. Now the the content of conservative hegemony is turning against itself, and Trumpism in the result. On one side are neoliberal efforts to contract social reproduction, and thereby struggle to renew the profitability of capitalism. On the other side are appeals to white populist nationalism, which increasingly undermine the norms of the bourgeois state and civil society. Both elements have been integral to neoliberal rule, but they can also become contradictory. As they contend in productive tension, they threaten a spiraling descent into authoritarianism and deepening capitalist retrogression.

Trump’s election signals that the turbulent waters of social contradiction have begun to spin faster. To grasp the dangers of this dynamic and how to overcome them, we have to trace their emergence from our own history, starting with the last capitalist crisis.

A New Hegemony from the Wreckage

In the late 1970s the U.S. capitalist class faced economic stagnation, rising inflation, and working class revolt in the streets and on the assembly line. In a bid to renew investment, they turned to attacking the costs of labor power, creating a new kind of working class in the process and detonating the Keynesian consensus that had stood for forty years. The 1970s crisis did not lead – as many had hoped – to a revolutionary challenge to capitalism, but to the emergence of a conservative hegemony that would expand and deepen for four decades.

Since the Great Depression, the trade unions, and later the civil rights leadership, had been steadily incorporated into capitalist production and the state. In exchange for labor peace and increased productivity, they had been promised expanded democratic rights, racial integration into civil society, and rising real wages. This period marked the definitive transition to the real domination of capital: the incorporation and reorganization of the whole of society according to the needs of capitalist value production. It resulted in a reduction of labor power, not only in terms of the gap between wage levels and the immense surpluses created at the time, but also through labor’s subjugation as an appendage of automation and the remaking of everyday life. The gap between the condition of workers and the enormous productive forces of capitalism continued to widen, sharpening a key contradiction of capitalism. Though living standards in the postwar period rose for many layers of the working class, thanks to the growing number of cheap consumer goods, this could only continue as long as the surpluses workers generated rose even faster. With economic stagnation in the 1970s – a combination of falling growth and soaring inflation – the material basis for the Keynesian regime dissolved. The capitalist class had to find a new way to rule.
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Anarchism, Communism, Fascism, Strategy, White Populism, White Supremacy

Morbid Symptoms: Fascism and Anti-Fascism

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As an interlude while we prepare the next installment of “Morbid Symptoms,” we’ve uploaded a short talk and reading list below. We hope these will help U.S. revolutionaries to analyze the phenomena of fascism and the Trump regime, and develop anti-fascist strategies on the ground that bring us closer to freedom.

Further reading on fascism and anti-fascism:

  • Beetham, David. (1984). Marxists in the Face of Fascism. Totowa: Barnes & Noble Press.
  • Guerin, Daniel. (1994). Fascism and Big Business. New York: Pathfinder.
  • Hammerquist, Don. (2002). “Fascism and Anti-Fascism.” In Confronting Fascism. Montreal: Kersplebedeb.
  • Passmore, Kevin. (2014). Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Payne, Stanley. (1983). Fascism: Comparison and Definition. University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Sakai, J. (2002). “The Shock of Recognition.” In Confronting Fascism. Montreal: Kersplebedeb.
Crisis, Fascism, Nationalism, White Populism

Morbid Symptoms: The Rise of Trump

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The following series attempts to understand the rise of Donald Trump, particularly in the context of capitalist crisis and the emerging power of the populist and far right. Part one is below. Part two is here.

                                                 *****

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
– Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

The election of Donald Trump––despite his losing the popular vote––has come as a shock to many Americans. While most recognized that the campaign had tightened after the intervention of the FBI, it was assumed that Clinton would edge out Trump on election day. But even if the Democratic Party had narrowly won the presidential election, it would have told us nothing about the development of mass rightwing populism and white nationalism in the U.S. This force represents both an immediate threat and a long-term strategic challenge to those of us seeking liberation. How can we understand what has happened? And what can be done?

Capitalist Crisis and the Rise of Trump

Trump’s rise is a consequence of the ongoing and deepening crisis of global capitalism. Since the 1970s capital has faced the problem of falling profits, and the resulting crises have made it difficult for the political and economic order to reproduce itself in a reliable way. For decades capitalists confronted this problem by cutting costs, especially the cost of labor power: slashing wages, benefits, health care, education, and housing. In the former Third World this entailed gutting the developmentalist regimes that took power after decolonization. In the capitalist core (like the U.S. and Europe) it required dismantling social democracy.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, capital sought to remove any roadblocks to profitability, starting with institutions such as unions and labor parties, and the rights won through a century of worker, civil rights, women, and queer struggles. The great concentrations of industry and proletarian power were broken apart through globalization. Labor parties and nationalist governments were incorporated into the management of capital, and made partners in exploitation. In many countries, new technocratic politicians and managers came to control national governments, state bureaucracies, and major institutions like schools. This was the “neoliberal” elite.

The neoliberals operated on a consensus that cut across the political spectrum: the economy would only be sustained through capitalist globalization abroad and austerity at home. In the capitalist core, this meant abandoning sections of the working class that had previously enjoyed some political representation and economic benefits, largely through the inclusion of unions and social democratic voting blocs. The elites carrying out this program united former “progressives” alongside conservatives. Bill Clinton––who signed NAFTA in 1993, expanded mass incarceration in 1994, and gutted welfare in 1996––is a great example.
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Fascism

Crackers in the Concrete

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On August 21, a group of armed white supremacists held a White Lives Matter rally in Houston. This rally took place in front of the NAACP office in the Third Ward, which is the center of gravity for BLM protests and home of Houston’s Black Nationalist organizations. Simultaneously, a white supremacist reaction to the BLM movement has been spreading nationally, and has raised many questions for organizers around self-defense. To understand how it is that a group of armed crackers was able to hold a rally in front of the NAACP headquarters in the most militant black community in Houston, it is important to see how the right has developed in recent moments, and how the left has failed to develop an adequate self-defense strategy within the movement.

In Houston this dynamic has a unique development which can be traced back to the Trayvon Martin rallies in 2013, and has moved and changed alongside the evolution of the BLM movement.

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Incarcerated Workers Take the Lead: Prison Struggles in the United States 2008-2016

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Jesus Manuel Galindo, 11.29.1976 – 12.12.2008

The Houston Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (I.W.O.C.) would like to dedicate this pamphlet to the memory of Jesus Manuel Galindo, a detainee at the Reeves County Detention Complex in Pecos, Texas.  His death was not in vain.

Introduction

The following summary was completed on the heels of the Texas work stoppage, a mass strike taking place in April of this year, but the idea for it came out of discussions two years prior after a series of hunger and labor strikes spread across the US.  These strikes occurred in both private and public facilities – in prisons that housed primarily US-born workers and also detention centers responsible for the incarceration of undocumented workers and even families.

We are writing this for you–our fellow workers locked down and forgotten by mainstream society–and for us, since we know our own struggles against the bosses and the State on the outside are inseparably tied together with your struggles.  Living in the country with the largest prison population in the world, many of us have family, friends, and comrades who are already incarcerated.  We know that where you are is where we are all headed unless we organize and fight back.

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The 2015 Baltimore Uprising: A Book Review

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One year has passed since the streets of Baltimore erupted in rebellion after the police murder of Freddie Gray. While people will recall the dramatic footage of a CVS on fire and rebellious youth dispersing police lines in the streets like leaves in the wind, we look deeper to understand the full significance of what occurred. What follows is a book review of the sharpest account of the Baltimore Uprising to date, and we invite readers to join the discussion and share their own reflections in the comments section.

Baltimore1

“Looking at a lot of shit different now”:
Research and Destroy’s The 2015 Baltimore Uprising

By Rosa DeLux and Chino Mayday

The story of a rebellion is usually told from the perspective of its opponents. Those who subdue the rebellion define the narrative, while the real movement of revolt––the sound of store windows breaking, the feelings of elation when cops break formation and run, the curious mix of self-doubt and bravado one encounters in the street––is lost to history. That is, until the rebels tell their story themselves. The 2015 Baltimore Uprising: A Teen Epistolary tells the story of last year’s Baltimore riots from the perspective of its participants, offering an exciting, humorous and deeply provocative snapshot of young rebels in motion.

Compiled by Research and Destroy New York City[1], Uprising collects hundreds of tweets from the teenagers who turned Baltimore on its head in April 2015, after police murdered Freddie Gray in the back of a patrol van. Uprising is filled with their outrage, their feelings of “west baltimore making history,” and their meditations on the value of black life, and this alone makes the book required reading for anyone trying to understand where the black movement in the United States may be headed. A few reviews hyped Uprising when it came out,[2] but this piece highlights a theme from the book that deserves more attention: how young people in Baltimore came to understand themselves as active subjects shaping the course of history. This theme challenges commentators––both right-wing and left-wing––who saw only nihilism in the riots, and it demands consideration by anyone who wants to abolish white supremacy. Yes, the rebels of Baltimore rejected our oppressive society. But they also made themselves anew in the process.

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Patriarchy, Queer Liberation, Revolutionary Organization, Women

Learning to Fight, Learning to Heal

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Like everybody else, Unity and Struggle members have grappled with how to address abuse and patriarchal behavior in our society, and in left organizations including our own. We don’t have easy answers, but we’ve found it helpful to study the nature of abuse under capitalism and different responses to it. Below is the syllabus for an abuse study that some U&S members and friends are currently test-driving in several cities, based on interest. We hope other groups will take up the reading list, adapt it to their needs, and use it to craft responses to abuse in our movement and lives.

UPDATE 6/5/2016: We’ve added a few more discussion questions to this study guide, to reflect some of the themes that came up as we finished reading everything.

Sit El Banat, stencil tribute to the women who were beaten, dragged and stamped on by military forces in December 2011. Image from SuzeInTheCity

Abuse Study Guide

1. Defining Abusive Relations.

Objectives: (1) Gain empirical understanding of the broad range of physical and emotional abuse in intimate partnerships; (2) Explore relationship between objective social relations and individual experience of abuse, consent, trauma; (3) Develop our own definition of abuse;

 

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Español, Fanon, Women

Soy mujer y soy humana: Una crítica marxista-feminista de la teoría de la interseccionalidad

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de Eve Mitchell; traducido por CM de We’re Hir We’re Queer

Read English version here

Introducción.

En los Estados Unidos, al final del siglo XX y principios del XXI, domina un conjunto específico de políticas entre la izquierda. Hoy en día, podrías entrar a cualquier universidad, a cualquiera de los numerosos blogs progresistas-izquierdistas o a cualquiera web de noticias y los conceptos de “la identidad” y “la interseccionalidad” encontrarás como la teoría hegemónica. Pero, como toda teoría, ésta corresponde a la actividad de la clase obrera contestando a la composición del capital actual. La teoría no es ninguna nube flotando sobre la clase, lloviendo reflexiones e ideas, sino, como escribe Raya Dunayevskaya, “las acciones del proletariado crean la posibilidad para que el intelectual resuelva la teoría.” (Marxismo y libertad, 114)[1]. Por lo tanto, para entender las teorías dominantes de nuestra época, hay que entender el movimiento verdadero de la clase. En este texto, voy a repasar la historia de las políticas de la identidad y la teoría de la interseccionalidad con el fin de construir una crítica de la teoría de la interseccionalidad y ofrecer una concepción marxista positiva del feminismo.

El contexto de “la identidad” y “la teoría de la interseccionalidad.”

Para entender “la identidad” y “la teoría de la interseccionalidad”, hay que entender la circulación del capital (es decir, la totalidad de las relaciones sociales de la producción en el modo actual de producción) que precedió el desarrollo de tales conceptos en los años 1960 y 1970 en los EEUU. Más específico aún, ya que “la teoría de la interseccionalidad” se desarrollaba principalmente como reacción al feminismo de la segunda ola, hay que estudiar cómo se desarrollaban las relaciones de género bajo el capitalismo.

En el movimiento del feudalismo al capitalismo, la división del trabajo por género, y luego las relaciones de género dentro de la clase, empezó a tomar una nueva forma que correspondía a las necesidades del capital. Algunas de las nuevas relaciones incluyen las siguientes:

(1) El desarrollo del salario. El salario es la forma capitalista de la coerción. Tal como lo explica Maria Mies en el libro, El patriarcado y la acumulación a escala mundial, el salario reemplazaba a la servidumbre y a la esclavitud como el método de forzar el trabajo alienado (quiere decir, el trabajo que realiza un trabajador para otra persona). Bajo el capitalismo, los que producen (los trabajadores) no poseen los medios de producción, así que tienen que trabajar por los que sí poseen los medios de producción (los capitalistas). Así pues, los obreros tienen que vender al capitalista lo único que poseen, la capacidad de trabajar, o la fuerza de trabajo. Este es un elemento clave porque los obreros no son remunerados por el trabajo vivo sensitivo – el acto de producir – sino por la capacidad de trabajar. La ruptura entre el trabajo y la fuerza de trabajo causa una falsa impresión de un intercambio equitativo de valor – al parecer, el trabajador cobra por la cantidad que uno produce, pero más bien el trabajador cobra únicamente por la capacidad de trabajar por un período determinado.

Además, la jornada laboral se divide en dos: el tiempo de trabajo necesario y el tiempo de trabajo excedente. El tiempo de trabajo necesario es el tiempo (como promedio) para que un trabajador produzca suficiente valor para comprar todo lo necesario para reproducirse (todas las cosas, desde la comida hasta un iPhone). El tiempo de trabajo excedente es el tiempo que uno trabaja más allá de lo necesario. Ya que la tasa vigente de la fuerza de trabajo (nuevamente, la capacidad de trabajar – no el trabajo vivo en sí) es el valor de todo lo que un trabajador necesita para reproducirse, el valor que genera el trabajo excedente va directamente hacia los bolsillos del capitalista. Digamos que yo trabajo en una empresa de los Furby. Cobro $10 por día por 10 horas del trabajo, produzco 10 Furby diariamente, y cada Furby se vende por $10. El capitalista me paga por la capacidad de trabajar una hora diaria para producir suficiente valor para reproducirme (1 Furby = 1 hora de trabajo = $10). Así, el tiempo de trabajo necesario es una hora y el tiempo del trabajo excedente son 9 horas (10-1). El sueldo esconde la verdad. Recuerde que, dentro del capitalismo, parece que cobramos por el valor equitativo de lo que producimos. Sin embargo, cobramos solamente por el tiempo de trabajo necesario, o la cantidad mínima necesaria para reproducirnos. Bajo el feudalismo, fue distinto y fue muy claro cuánto tiempo trabajaba cada uno por sí mismo y cuánto tiempo trabajaba por otro. Por ejemplo, si la sierva labraba la tierra cinco horas por semana para producir la comida para el señor feudal, luego el tiempo restante le pertenecía a ella. El surgimiento del salario es clave porque fue el mismo salario que impuso la división del trabajo por género.

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Patriarchy, Women

No Safehouses: Patriarchy on the Left Part 2 of 4

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by Jocelyn Cohn and Eve Mitchell

This is the second part of a four part series that attempts to understand patriarchy in our current society.  The first part, “No Lamps, No Candles, No More Light” explored the relationship between gender, patriarchy, and sexism broadly in capitalist society.  This section will explore the expressions of patriarchy specifically in the “left” subculture.  Parts three and four will look more specifically at recent attempts to deal with patriarchy on the left, some critiques and potential solutions.

Left Updated

Image Credit:  Minhee Bae

Patriarchy is a total social relation that takes particular forms of expression in a society dominated by the capitalist mode of production.  There are no “safehouses” or “patriarchy-free zones,” because patriarchy is defined in its deeply personal and bodily expressions.  We carry its effects with us everywhere.  However, as also discussed in the last section, patriarchy finds different forms of expression in different areas of life.  Individual expressions of gendered and patriarchal relations within the working class can be known as “sexism.”  In this section we will explore the ways that we have seen and understood sexism in “left” organizing spaces and subcultures specifically.  This is meant as a broad sketch of what we find most prevalent.  Not all people will have the same experiences, and we are not able to discuss every person’s individual conditions, but we do hope others will find resonance here.

Who is The Left?

By “the left” we mean radical/activist/progressive/socialist/anarchist/communist political and social milieus.  While we recognize that all people have political experiences and the ability to comprehend and articulate extremely complicated aspects of capital, there is a material difference between those who make up the organized and subcultural left and those who make up the broader working class. When we discuss “sexism on the left,” we are talking about a relatively small group of people who see themselves consciously as activists, leftists, theoreticians or revolutionaries and who, in this moment, are objectively isolated from the working class itself.  This is despite the fact that most individuals on the left are proletarians, in that they do not own the means of production and therefore must sell their labor power to survive under capitalism. This is the result of historical and objective factors such as the murder, incarceration, and institutionalization of revolutionaries; neoliberalism; the capitalist subsumption of much activism; the absence of a generalized movement that blurs the line between activists and proletarians; etc.  There are also revolutionaries’ subjective failures such as an inability or refusal to develop lasting roots in organizing projects that build contacts and trust among working class communities.

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