Turgid Philosopher (1990)

Book Review from the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Althusser and Feminism by Alison Assiter. (Pluto Press. £17.50.)

Who cares what Althusser has to say about feminism or, for that matter, what feminists have to say about Althusser? Had the French philosopher, Louis Althusser, never written a word, socialist thought would be none the poorer.

Like many books which claim to illuminate the hidden meanings of Marxist thinking. the pages are filled with references to the “esteemed" theoretical interpreters of Marx. Do these academic Marxologists not care that Marx urged philosophers to become actively involved to change the world rather than merely interpret the word? The turgid volumes of these Althusserian and anti-Althusserian commentators, whose outpourings are referred to by Assiter as "the literature", have played no role in stimulating working-class understanding of the need for socialism. They have played with Marx's ideas.

It is a pity that philosophers who want to offer abstruse language and cleverly-formulated abstract propositions as signs of their own brightness do not stick to writing about Aristotle or Descartes: at least that would keep them out of the way of the real struggle. Professional academics tend to prove themselves by taking relatively difficult ideas and making them appear incomprehensible. For example, take Marx's view that the forces of production tend to determine the relations of production. Here is Assiter explaining Althusser's description of "the relation between the various levels in the structure":

How are we to understand these relations? The answer, surely, is by referring to the Spinozist conception of causality. Economic and non-economic practices will be related, not by means of Humean or Liebnizean causality, but by Spinozist "metonymic" causality, (p.26).

Bet you'd never looked at it that way before! This book is full of such tortuously expressed utterances.

As for the analysis—insofar as it begins to emerge after two or three readings of what is a sadly disorganised book—there are some good bits (such as Chapter Three on 'Needs and Production' which lays the foundation for a worthwhile study of how needs are determined) and some others which reflect poor thinking. Why is the working class referred to as "the working classes"? (p.35). There is only one. Why does the back cover say that the book deals, amongst others, with Foucault— who did have something stimulating to say for himself—but there is no mention of him in the text or even the index? Why does Assiter state that “since the forces of production were insufficiently developed, socialism could not have come about in Russia in 1917"? (pp.43-4). Surely Assiter knows that even had they been so developed. socialism in one country was out of the question. Anyway, the overwhelming majority of Russians lacked any socialist consciousness. To the book's credit, it includes a satisfactory definition of socialism as a social system in which "people will have free access to all that is produced: they will be able to take what they want or need from the available wealth" (p.52). The writer does not say whether she favours this objective and is prepared to do anything practical to bring it about.

Steve Coleman

Feminist Fantasy (1978)

Film Review from the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take It Like a Man, Ma'am (seen at the ICA), was produced by a Danish feminist film collective. It starkly reveals some of the contradictions in the feminist viewpoint. It stars Tove Maes, who plays Ellen—a middle-aged, relatively rich woman whose children have left home and who, left to her own devices, begins to experience the ‘anomie’ of the lonely, idle housewife. Her main activity is anticipating her husband’s homecoming. The focal point of her life is somewhere on the periphery of his; her main function in life is to look after him.

After a party where she is ignored and belittled by her husband’s friends, she visits a doctor. He blames the menopause, and suggests to her husband that he buy her a puppy. (‘It often works’.) Her own solution is to join the labour market, and, as a result, becomes a “new woman.”

Ironies

The irony that actualising our ability to sell our labour power should be seen as a solution to any problem is the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the film, this irony is overlaid with another: a glossing over of the difference between sex and class. It is implied, in a mildly amusing sex role reversal fantasy of Ellen’s that the ruling class is all and only male. The feminist view that men as such oppress women as such is combined with the view that it is the ruling class, because of its position under capitalism, which exploits the working class. In Ellen’s fantasy, the men not only look after the children, while the women go out to work, but the men are secretaries and take orders from women bosses. The male secretaries ride bicycles and carry heavy bags, while the women drive in Rolls Royces. Now maybe it is true that most bosses are male and most secretaries female, but it is certainly not the case, as this sequence implies, that all females are members of the working class. The crowning point comes when Ellen—now herself— visits a market and strolls casually around in her finery. The hard-working stallholders are female. She remarks to one of them: ‘We are all sisters, now.’

Feminism

The film comes across as uncertainly reflecting the feminist viewpoint on society. But it also appears to recognise—and here is the origin of its unease—that there is a class division in society as well. Unfortunately the latter is not explicitly seen as a major cause of society’s problems—those of women as well as men. So the film presents the class division in society as coinciding with the division between the sexes. It is implied that the ruling class is exclusively male, while the working class is exclusively female.

This, of course is not just false; it is also highly misleading. Some women are capitalist—the Queen, and most men are members of the working class. To suggest that things are otherwise—that it is men who are the oppressors is to lead people up the garden path. Women will be concentrating their energies upon kicking their husbands when they should be focussing upon the real causes of oppression under capitalism: the class system.

An to suggest—as the film does when it recognises the existence of the class system—that the solution to the problems of women housewives lies in their becoming women factory workers is like suggesting that the way to get rid of wars is to join those who are in the front line. Though the latter might lead people to believe that wars ought to be abolished, it won’t get rid of them. Anyway the premises are false. Women housewives are not outside the class system and only joining it when they begin working in a factory; they are part and parcel of it.

If they spend their lives imagining they are outside it, they are like prisoners who are under the illusion that they are free, and who like the idea of going to prison to see what it is like, in order to convince themselves that it is a good idea to abolish the prison system. Instead of adopting any of these illusory, roundabout courses, women housewives ought simply to recognise that they are part of the class system, and begin doing something to get rid of it.

Alison Waters

The Baader-Meinhof terrorists: Majority understanding or minority action? (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 5th September this year, Dr. M. H. Schleyer, a West German industrialist and ex-member of Hitler's SS, was kidnapped. He was later murdered. Connected with this, a Lufthansa aircraft carrying 86 paasengers was hi-jacked, and the pilot was later killed.

These activities were carried out by a group of West german terrorists or, as some people call them "freedom fighters": the Baader-Meinhof group. Hi-jackings and kidnappings like these have been happening fairly frequently in recent years.

Who are these terrorists? Groups like the Baader-Meinhofs, the Angry Brigade, the IRA and the PFLP in Palestine are all minorities in their countries of origin; and they act, generally, by attacking an individual, or several individuals, to frighten and coerce a number of others. Sometimes, as with the various factions of the IRA in N. Ireland, the activities of the terrorists take place mainly in their own countries. Such groupings may be given support by sympathizers in foreign countries; the IRA is given funds and weapons by some of the Irish in America. At other times, as for example the kidnapping of the OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in 1975, international terrorist groups act in countries in which they have no interest but which serve as a stage for some spectacular kidnapping or hi-jacking.

Aims
What are the aims of these people? It is often difficult to answer this question, because the Angry Brigade and the Baader-Meinhofs  are minority groupings who are unsympathetic to the existing state machine. Hence they are unlikely to get publicity from the press and television etc.

One can understand something of the aims of groups like the Baader-Meinhof by their actions, and by the occasional piece of propaganda. On the 21st October this year, the Paris daily Liberation, carried this statement from the Baader-Meinhofs: "We will never forget the blood spilled by Schmidt and the Imperialists who support him. The battle has only begun. Freedom by the anti-Imperialists." (Quoted in The Times Oct 21 1977).

So, like the present Eurocommunists, the Baader-Meinhofs believe that the section of the population to be overthrown is not the capitalist class as a whole, but only part of that class. (The Eurocommunists would claim that it is the "monopoly capitalists" whereas the Baader-Meinhofs make out that it is the "Imperialists".) And like the 19th century Blanquists, the Baader-Meinhofs believe that they can change society by confrontation with the state power. But it is impossible for such action to succeed, because they have to take on the ruling power: the existing army, the police force, etc. The existing state machines have access to vastly greater resources to build armaments etc. than any minority group can hope for. Often the result of terrorism is to increase repression. The governments of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina have adopted ruthless methods against terrorists; and there has been talk, in the Conservative Party in Great Britain recently, of bringing back hanging for terrorists.

The British government refused to give way to the demands of the Tupamaros when they held captive the British Ambassador to Uruguay Geoffrey Jackson. And the Dutch Government held firm while the industrialist Dr. Herrema was held by members of the IRA in 1975.

Moreover, in the rare event of the minority grouping succeeding in taking over state power by force, it is inevitable that the group will have to maintain power by force, or by being prepared to use force if and when necessary. In the 1940s in China, Mao Tse-Tung and his guerilla army succeeded in building up a sufficiently strong force to overthrow the legitimate government of the Kuomintang. They were able to do this partly because of hostility among large sections of the Chinese peasantry towards the Japanese who were occupying parts of China. But the Chinese "Communist" party have kept a 2.5 million strong so-called "People's Army" (which, of course, is not an army of the people, a concept which is nonsensical, but an army which, if necessary, would act contrary to the interests of the people.)

Terrorism is no new force of warfare: the slaves led by Spartacus in Rome were in many ways like the PFLP. But, as a form of "warfare" it does seem to be growing. Richard Clutterbuck, in a recent book on the subject, argues that though as old as civilization, terrorism has replaced old-style wars between armies as a form of international coercion. Whether or not this is true terrorism cannot be an agent of socialist revolution, because Socialism requires a majority understanding and accepting the socialist case. Instead, terrorists are making the task more difficult by bringing into disrepute the word Revolution.

Alison Waters

Sex, class and socialism (1980)

From the February 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Russian novelist Turgenev once said of George Sand: 'What a good man she was and what a kind woman'. Rousseau argued in Emile that education was a male prerogative, that women should devote themselves exclusively to the pleasing of men. Aristotle had been somewhat ruder: in his view 'women were, as it were, deformed males'. The hostility of some modern feminists can be explained in part as a reaction against views of this kind; and yet it is incontestably true that to be a good writer at certain periods in history—indeed, a good almost anything at all—one had to be male. Napoleon's Civil Code of 1804 neatly summed up the relationship of the sexes: 'Woman is given to man in order to have children. Woman belongs to man as the fruit tree belongs to the gardener'. The view that women were created for the use of men was given its most extreme expression much earlier, however. Eve, according to Moses, was one of Adam's ribs.

Evidence of modern inequality of treatment between the sexes is more prosaic. In 1976, 71 per cent of the world labour force was male while 45 per cent of unpaid family workers were women. The percentage of illiterate women was higher than that of men. In the social sciences 25 per cent of the workforce was female, in law 15 per cent, in engineering 5 per cent and in the armed forces 2 per cent. However, half of all elementary school teachers were women. (Quoted in Elise Boulding: Women in the 20th Century World.)

There is firm evidence, then, that women and men have been treated unequally throughout history. The feminist and socialist responses to the questions of how this came about and what should be done about it differ fundamentally.

The Cause

Early feminists considered lack of education and an inferior position in law as the causes of women's subordination. If, they argued, women had certain rights, such as that to be killed, then they ought to have others. The early feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft put it thus: 'If women have the right to go to the guillotine they can have property rights'.

Within their limitations, the Stantons in the United States and the Pankhursts in Britain achieved a measure of success. Laws were passed giving women rights of property, and today their counterparts press for the strict implementation of equal pay and equal rights at work legislation. The trouble with this kind of programme, however, is that it fails to explain why women have been treated as inferiors. It mistakes a symptom for a cause. This superficiality led to a mindless militancy, typified by the suffragette Ida Alexa Ross Wylie:

“To my astonishment I found that women could at a pinch outrun the average London Bobby. Their aim with a little practice became good enough to land ripe vegetables in ministerial eyes, their wits sharp enough to keep Scotland Yard running around in circles and looking very silly. The day that with a straight left to the jaw, I sent a fair-sized CID officer into the orchestra pit of the theatre was the day of my corning of age. . .”

An indication of the depth of these women's thinking was the almost total collapse of the movement after the achievement of the vote.

In the United States and elsewhere in the late 1960s, a new women's movement arose which attempted to fill some of the gaps in the programme by identifying the cause of female subordination. Under the influence of the 'counterculture' many groups in society — black people, students and others — became disenchanted with some of the effects of advanced capitalism. They thought that people were becoming the passive recipients of the 'ideologies' of advertising and the mass media. Particularly relevant to women was the exposure of the way that capitalism exploited women's sexuality in order to sell its products. Formed with the general and rather vague aim of doing something about the position of women in society, the movement has grown considerably and embraces persons of many different political persuasions and parties.

Sexual Reality

One influential, though small, group within the movement centres around the ideas of Shulamith Firestone, author of The Dialectic of Sex. According to Firestone, Marx's Materialist Conception of History ought to be extended into the realm of the sexual, for 'beneath the economic, reality is psycho-sexual'. There are, she claims, two basic classes: men and women; and the origin of this division lies in biology.  'Sex class sprang from a biological reality: men and women were created different and not equal.' Before the advent of birth control, women were at the continual mercy of their biology with menstruation, menopause and wet nursing.

Firestone 'extends' Marx and Engels’ analysis simply by altering their words Here is her version of part of Engels' Socialism, Utopian and Scientific:

“Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the (economic development of society) dialectic of sex: the division of society into biological classes for the purposes of procreative production and the struggle of these classes with one another: in the changes in the modes of (production and exchange) marriage, reproduction and child care created by these struggles. . . ”  

(The italicised words are Firestone's insertions; Engels' original text appears in brackets.)

Instead of the economic, Firestone argues, the sexual-reproductive area of society furnishes the real basis upon which the superstructure of economic. juridical and political institutions arises.

What, then, is to be done? If women's subordination is biologically determined, the consistent answer would appear to be: change female biology. Firestone agrees. Just as for Marx a condition of socialism is working class control of the means of production, so for her a condition of 'classless' society is women controlling their means of reproduction. And this means ceasing to bear as well as rear children. for 'pregnancy is barbaric: it is the temporary deformation of the body of the individual for the sake of the species'. It is proposed instead that test tube babies (made possible by developments in embryology and cybernetics) will facilitate a 'qualitative change in humanity's basic relation to both its production and its reproduction'. These new relations will make possible the destruction of the class system and of the family.

The difficulty with this proposition is that it explains social and cultural differences between peoples in biological terms only. More importantly it fails — as it must — in the attempt to transform a theory by altering some of its concepts but not others. According to the Materialist Conception of History, the economic base of society determines the nature of juridical and political institutions and the consciousness that a people has of itself. Further, changes in the economic base are explained in terms of class struggle and the conflict between developing forces of production and the relations of production. Feudalism disappeared because its social relations were not in the interest of the rising bourgeoisie; capitalism will be replaced by socialism when, with a sufficiently developed technology, the working class becomes conscious of its interests.

Firestone wants to argue that 'sexual-reproductive' reality conditions the economic, the ideological and other social phenomena. What, then, could correspond to the forces and relations of production within 'sexual-reproductive' reality? And what could correlate with the class struggle? If we are to be literal, the forces of production are replaced by the sexual organs — the 'tools'. For the analogy to hold we need to say that as the sexual organs change and develop so they come into conflict with the relations of reproduction. Maybe the male organ grew much smaller with the change to the Punaluan family and smaller still with the institution of monogamy. But all this is approaching the realm of pure fantasy. And the analogy is clearly invalid when we examine family relations over the course of history, The early changes were due to the simple operation of a survival mechanism and can be explained in terms of biological evolution, while the later came about through the operation of social constraints.

In socialist theory, the history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggle. Under capitalism, it is in the interests of the ruling class to extract as much surplus value from the workers as possible, and one way to do this is by keeping wages low. The interests of the working class are necessarily the opposite. If we interpose Firestone's theory, however, it is only with couples like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (as they were) or in partnerships where the woman gets satisfaction by ensuring that the man gets none, or vice versa, that the interests of the sexes are necessarily opposed. Firestone's theory therefore rests on shifting sands and is of no use in the struggle to change the inferior social status of women.

Class Division

For the materialist there is no blanket exploitation of women by men. The subordination of one sex to another was coincident with the division of society into classes. Prior to the beginning of civilisation-the period of written history — there existed primitive communist societies in which nobody was afforded superior status. The period from primitive communism to the beginning of civilisation saw the growth of taboos, first on child-parent relationships and then on those between brother and sister, culminating in the 'pairing' family. (For one vital source see Engels: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.) Monogamy, however, arose as a consequence of social evolution. This form of family, based as it is on the supremacy of the man, arises alongside the advent of private property. Women's biological commitment to child bearing meant that it tended to be the man who acquired property and instruments of production, and once men had these things they wanted to keep them. So the monogamous family has as its aim the begetting of children of undisputed paternity and women's role is essentially a childbearing one. So, to quote Engels: 'The first class antagonism which appears in history (it begins at civilisation) coincides with the development of the antagonism between men and women in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression with that of the female sex by the male'.

It should be emphasised once more that we are not talking of a consistent oppression of one sex by another. In the early stages of capitalism, for example, women enjoyed certain rights and privileges which they later lost. In early 17th century Britain, where some production was still organised in accordance with guild regulations, women in certain trades were protected against male competition. These rights often related to the work of women in the household, for at that stage domestic and industrial work were not clearly distinct. 'Spinster' meant not an old maid, but a woman who supported herself by spinning; a 'brewster' was a woman who supported herself by brewing beer. Moreover, in spite of Puritanism, women were not thought of as sexually inferior, as is borne out by this 17th century proverb: 'Women are saints in the church, angels in the street, devils in the kitchen and apes in bed'.

With the increases in the productivity of labour and with changes in the organisation of production these protective features disappeared. The wives of those who owned property were educated to please men, while those who were married to wage slaves simply cooked and looked after the children. The man's wage sufficed to maintain his family as well as to reproduce his own labour power. Then, in the 19th century, when capitalism began to need a greater workforce, part of the worst exploited sections of the working class was composed of women. Being physically weaker and previously out of work, they provided a cheap source of labour. In Capital Marx cites the case of a milliner who died from overwork (she laboured sixteen and a half hours a day in 1863). He further mentions that women were used instead of horses for hauling canal boats because:

“the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, whereas that required to maintain the woman is below all calculation.”

The capitalist nonetheless needs labour power—he cannot have part of the workforce dying off. So these extreme conditions were altered and laws were passed improving the conditions of the working class.

Class society, then, creates the conditions for women's inferior treatment. If the wives of the property owning class are restricted to the home, it is all too easy for the men to reap the benefits. For the same reason, the working man's wage must suffice for himself and for his family. Whatever form the subordination of women has assumed, it is a consequence of the class division of society; in the case of capitalism, the division between owners and non-owners of the means of producing wealth. Before the advent of class society there was no reason for one sex to treat the other as inferior because there were no owners and non-owners of property, and therefore no need for competition.

It is important to point out that there are female members of the exploiting class. Working class women, by contrast, share with others in their class the condition of wage slavery. Whichever form it takes, whether it is real prostitution or working on the assembly line, they have to sell part of themselves —  their labour power — in order to live. As Marx put it: Prostitution is only the specific form of the universal prostitution of the working class'.

.

Instead of criticising men, women ought to be criticising capitalism and working for socialism, a classless society of common ownership. In such a society there is no reason to suppose that women will have to become men or men women.

Alison Waters

A better kind of capitalism (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard "He is considered the most graceful speaker who can say nothing in most words." Samuel Butler, Notebooks. At a meeting of business men in San Francisco recently, two speakers put forward their views about the American economic system. They were Michael Harrington, author of The Twilight of Capitalism and the  widely-read Socialism, and Fletcher Byrom, chairman of the board of the Kopper Corporation, a thriving industrial enterprise. Their suggestions for solving American capitalism's problems turned out to be remarkably similar. Only their descriptions of their views were different. The debate was reported in the New York Times of 5th May. Harrington, described his standpoint as a "democratic socialist" one, while Byrom's word for his projected future society was "technocratic". The symmetry of their proposals makes clear that one or other was using words wrongly; or was it both of them? Harrington claimed that the American system has undergone changes away from "free-enterprise capitalism" and in the direction of "collectivism". Byrom argued that, with increased mechanization and automation, making people work hard was less important than organizing society better through government. Both speakers agreed that there is something wrong with the present management of American society. Both proposed, to solve America's problems, a better planned administration. In spite of Harrington's description of the present order as "welfare decadent capitalism", neither saw the cause of the problems as capitalism itself; both blamed the inefficient use of government resources. Thus, Harrington's "democratic socialist" programme included "increasing public sector employment, redistributing wealth towards the poor, and social control of investment in the United States". And Byrom's "technocratic" solution included the following measures: "longer terms in office for elected politicians, improvements in health delivery systems, inner city schools and other social programmes to reduce unemployment". The reforms suggested have nothing whatever to do with Socialism. On the contrary, increased state intervention is something required by capitalism. Harrington's ideas are those of a section of the Labour Party, who claim to be able to "reform away" capitalist evils; but they also belong to a school of thought whose roots lie in a book published in 1940 called The Managerial Revolution. Its author, James Burnham, claimed that capitalism was being superceded - it was no longer the owners of capital who controlled society but the "managerial class": salaried executives, engineers, managers and civil servants. None of these doctrines is correct or provides an understanding of what takes place in the capitalist system. It is based on the ownership - which may or may not be synonymous with control - of the means of living by a class. Wealth takes one form only: commodities, or articles produced for sale at a profit. In some cases distribution, including transport and communications may need to be centrally organized virtually from the outset: the roads and postal system were "nationalized" at a very early stage in capitalism. In others, the production of basic materials such as coal, electricity, iron and steel eventually appears too important to capitalism as a whole to be left to "free enterprise", and the state takes control of them; or, as with agriculture, provides money and lays down conditions to ensure production in line with national policies. All this is necessary capitalist practice. At the same time, the state is obliged to legislate in what are called "social" matters on behalf of the capitalist class as a whole, or dominant sections of it. The working class has to be educated. Beyond a minimum general standard, the introduction of more complex machinery requires workers with technical skill and scientific knowledge. The state has to intervene (e.g. the central aim of Polytechnics is to co-operate with industry and to serve its needs). Subsidies and controls are used to keep wage demands in check; medical welfare, to minimize the losses to industry through illness; and so on. The measures advocated by Harrington and Byrom are part and parcel of the profit system. For example, "increasing public sector employment" happens as a matter of course - at certain times. They have nothing to do with a change away from capitalism, and therefore (vis-a-vis Harrington's use of the phrase "democratic socialist") nothing to do with Socialism. One last question on Harrington's contribution. He argues for "redistributing wealth towards the poor". It sounds humane and unexceptionable, yet it betrays lack of comprehension of what capitalism is about. Why does he think they are poor? They are, of course, wage-workers and the dependents of wage-workers, or the unemployed ones. In a book called The Other America: Poverty in the United States, published in 1962, he spoke repeatedly of "cheap unorganized labour" as the basic problem. But the working class as a whole is condemned to poverty, differing only in the degree of it. Apart from charitable handouts, there is no means for workers to get wealth "redistributed towards" them (whatever that means). They can and will struggle for higher wages and improved living standards, and the capitalist class at times finds itself forced to pay higher wages for labour-power. The fundamental wage-labour relationship which is the cause of poverty remains. Attempts to redistribute wealth by reform legislation have been going on for for a lifetime in Britain - and the reformers now admit that they have failed. In The Other America Harrington calls poverty "needless", as if it were the result of carelessness or mismanagement. As long as he thinks that, he is not thinking of Socialism. Alison Waters