What is meant by “mine”? (1994)

From the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

My daughter, my son, my husband, my wife, my girlfriend, my house, my land, my dog, my business, my factory, my country . . . Does "mine" simply mean that these things and these people are important to me, that I need them and care for them — or does it mean something more? Does "mine" mean that I have control over these things and that I can exclude others from enjoying the benefits they have to offer, and limit the parameters within which they may move?

The concept of ownership pervades the world we live in. Socialists believe that it goes hand-in-hand with an anti-human system of living.

I was recently involved in a very unpleasant incident. A woman I know phoned me, very distressed, at 6am, having been awake all night. Another woman, known to us both, was harbouring her 14-year-old daughter and my friend wanted her daughter back. She asked me to give her a lift to her (ex-)friend’s house. When the daughter was still not forthcoming, she called the police.

The upshot was that the daughter, who no longer wanted to live with her mother, called Childline and the woman harbouring her contacted a solicitor. It was very dramatic and I was not happy about being caught up in the middle of it. The mother had not been violent and the friction between them did not seem any different from what is normal between parents and teenagers.

But the daughter no longer wanted to live with her mother. She is now living with foster parents and, so far, is happier. The mother is heartbroken — and furious.

At the height of the crisis, she resorted to the argument of property: "She is my daughter. Aren’t I supposed to tell her what to do?"

As parents, present society makes as responsible, legally and socially, for the behaviour of our sons and daughters until they are 16 years old. This means that we are expected to control them, expected to have the final say over their every last action and we are culpable if their behaviour displeases the wider society. How much is "adolescent rebellion" a simple expression of indignation by a person who knows they are being treated as someone else’s property?

Generally speaking, all responsibility for the care of one or more children is placed upon the shoulders of just one or two adults for years on end; it is not necessarily the best way for either children or parent. There are societies, usually coming under the heading of "primitive", where the care of children beyond breastfeeding is a far more communal affair.

Discussion of the property relationship between parents and children raises other issues. The world is dominated by a system of property relationships which various people, including Engels, Reich and more recently, women in the feminist movement have described as "patriarchy".

Patriarchy involves the control of women and children by men. It is intrinsically patrilinear. Children are seen to be the property of their biological father, and take on the name of that father, as does their mother.

Each man has one or more wives, whom he regards as his property. The control of a woman's sexual behaviour is a very strong focus of patriarchal society, both because of the danger of "illegitimate" children, but also because one of the benefits which a man derives from his wife is sexual pleasure. If the wife is his property, he does not want other men helping themselves to the benefits thereof. Sadly, the imperative to control women’s sexual behaviour has led to the most terrible measures being taken, for example, footbinding in China and clitoridectomy in Africa. Back home in Britain double standards of sexual morality still exist. Commonly used insults such as "dog", "tart", "slut” have no masculine equivalent.

Many readers may know their personal relationships to have a very different basis from this. It is nonetheless a fact that this system of family relationships has dominated the world for thousands of years and it is supported and maintained by women as well as men. It is an important element of property-based society, so deeply ingrained it is regarded by many as "natural". Radical feminists can be forgiven for believing that the ultimate solution to the world’s problems is for women to overthrow patriarchy . . .

However it is not just women and children who are oppressed. These are not the only property relationships.

A slave is a human being who is being treated as another’s property. And we know there have been slaves far back in the past. What is not so immediately obvious is that the majority of us today are ourselves the slaves of a small minority of people who own and control the means of production; land, factories and so on. We are wage-slaves. Our relationship with our employers is a property' relationship.

Before our present economic system, the one dominating Britain was feudalism. In the preface to his version of Robin Hood, Henry' Gilbert wrote in 1912:

"Once upon a time the great mass of English people were unfree. They could not live where they chose, nor work for whom they pleased. Society in those feudal days was mainly divided into lords and peasants. The lords held the land from the King and the peasants or villeins were looked upon as part of the soil, and had to cultivate it to support themselves and their masters."

Henry Gilbert was, of course, right to suggest that the "Free Market Economy" which now dominates the world, does afford a greater freedom to the majority of the human race than the preceding feudalistic economy.

However, few of us now can live where we choose, or even have the dubious privilege, in these days of high unemployment, of finding another master, if we do not like the present one. I, for one, am very dissatisfied with the treatment I receive from my present employer but I have precious little chance of finding another job in a hurry, and, as for living where I choose, even with full-time employment I have been unable to move to more suitable accommodation, because I could not sell the house. Yet our local area has plenty of homeless people who would gladly have my house to live in, if only I was in a position to give it to them. So much for our "free" market economy.

To return to the aforementioned "primitive" societies; a large number of them demonstrate that we are perfectly capable of living as human beings without such a property basis. Having no property does not mean that you lose your house, your wife, your children. Far from it; it means that you can far more readily move to suitable accommodation. If your wife stays with you, you will be sure that she wants to because of who you are, not because she is economically trapped. Likewise your children . . .

We need to reclaim our sociality and begin to relate to each other as equals. Many of us are making sincere attempts to do just that already. We will find our attempts under constant threat of sabotage by a world system which eats, sleeps and breathes property and slavery. The only way to effectively and permanently achieve equality in our relationships is to first reclaim, as a class, the means of production, to set up a system of decision-making in which we may all have a part and a system of supply and demand whereby all people make and do what they are able to make and do, and receive that which they consider themselves to be in need of.

This way any limitations upon a person’s freedom are dictated only by the real needs of the overwhelming majority (for instance, our need for an ozone layer will interfere with a person’s freedom to manufacture CFCs). The vested interests and indulgences of a wealthy minority can no longer take precedence.

This is what is meant by socialism. We need the vast majority of the world’s people to understand it, want it and be prepared to work for it, in order to bring it about. Let us hope we do.

Nicky Snell

What is Love? (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

A young man and woman have a good relationship. They are both kind, thoughtful people. They both go out to work — she earns less than he does, but they share their income. He does his share of the housework. They both feel free to go out when they choose and they enjoy each other’s company. Their sexual relationship is good unpressured and imaginative — and like the rest of their relationship, based on equality.

Naturally, they have arguments from time to time, but they are quickly resolved. Untouched by life’s bitterness, they cannot imagine anything much ever going wrong. Why should it?

Then something happens which changes their lives for ever. She becomes pregnant and he does not. Raised by TV and magazine images of cute babies and blissful parenthood, they still cannot imagine anything but greater happiness. Things start to change. Affected by massive hormonal changes acting upon her like a strong drug and discomfited by the realization of what is happening to her body, the woman becomes moody, alternately bad-tempered and clingy.

He is irritated by her moodiness, feels pressured by her unusual clinginess and put off by her sickness and tiredness. They go to a party one night and he becomes flirtatious with another woman. She feels betrayed, and disturbed by her own insecurity and jealousy. He is enjoying the light relief from his unease and resents what he sees as her interference.

The boat has started to rock. Differences have set in. At this stage they sit and talk things over and they feel better for it.

When she has the baby, it is an intense experience for both of them. She is overwhelmed by the levels of physical pain and he suffers with her. The birth, however, is straightforward and the arrival of the baby is a joyous moment for both of them.

Now the fun begins. She breastfeeds the baby — for good reasons — it keeps mother and baby close and the milk is biologically the correct food for the baby, protecting from illness. He feels left out.

He cannot share the childcare at this stage. She cannot go back to work straight away so they become reliant on his income — a subtle shift in power occurs. They are living off "his" income. She becomes worn out with being awake at night. She knows she is on duty 24 hours a day, every day and is desperate for decent sleep. He believes he should not have to get up in the night with baby as he is going to do the work.

They can neither of them really understand the rift developing between them — and hardly believe it.

This story has a number of possible endings. They might somehow muddle through, and with the help of kind friends and relatives come to understand each other — or it might end in a nasty divorce, the child having been badly affected by years of hostility followed by the loss of someone loved.

In the years BC (before children) equality between men and women can seem a fairly straight forward affair. Differences between men and women are far fewer than similarities. Even at this stage, it is likely that awareness of parenthood is closer to the surface for women than for men. Having, whether by instinct or socialization, spent much of her childhood playing with babies, real or plastic, a woman is more likely to have potential parenthood in her consciousness. A man is likely to have spent much of his childhood climbing, running, jumping, exploring, competing, "scoring" and involved in physical, playful tussle with his mates. Sexuality is approached from this angle — babies hardly come into it.

Until the 1950s, the expectations placed upon a man in capitalism were that he should sell his time and energy to an employer in order to provide food and shelter for himself and "his” family whilst "his" wife should do all the housework and all the childcare (and if necessary another poorly paid job). However unsatisfied or miserable they might be they should remain monogamous "till death us do part". "Equality" did not come into it — the man must be (or at least appear to be) "in control of " his wife.

What is extraordinary, and a great tribute to "human nature" is that some of these marriages worked at a human level. There could be a mutual respect, an understanding that both parties were doing what needed to be done. There was not always excessive jealousy or deceit — both parties could co-operate. Not surprisingly, it was equally likely that the arrangement would falter. There was little divorce, but often a lot of misery contained, hidden and denied within the home.

Times have changed, expectations have shifted. We no longer feel morally obliged to stay in miserable monogamy for years on end. Neither have we found a much happier alternative. If people do manage to remain happy as a couple or end a marriage in a civil and respectful way, it seems a matter of chance, something that happens in spite of prevailing conditions and social pressures.

Attempts are made at alternative arrangements; communal living for instance, open marriage, voluntary childlessness, lesbian and gay relationships . . . The most common is that of the single parent, living as the only adult in the household, overburdened, isolated and usually poor — hardly a happy alternative to a rotten marriage, though often a more peaceful one.

From the sixties and before there has been an ongoing struggle to escape institutionalized monogamous marriage with its associated double standards for men and women.

However, within the framework of our economic system making sexual relationships and procreation a happy affair has remained well-nigh impossible.

The majority of people meet their basic needs through work done for capitalists, and the work of pregnancy, childbirth and 24-hour care of small, needy and demanding human beings is not materially rewarded; it does not serve the capitalists any immediate financial purpose. This throws the parents with care of their children on to the mercy of partners who, already resentful at having to sell their lives and souls, can have very ambiguous feelings about having to meet demands at home. Otherwise they are minimally and reluctantly supported by the state.

In truth, the person (usually a woman) raising the next generation of human beings is undertaking an enormously important task in terms of the wider society but because the profit system makes no immediate gains from the work she is doing, she is left with many of her needs largely unmet — some of them very basic, adequate sleep and rest for instance.

Other needs are less clearly defined — autonomy, freedom of movement, free time, respect, appreciation, adequate adult company — to name but a few. And because the carers’ needs are unmet, she can not meet those of the children, the future women and men of the world. Hence the deep sense of parental guilt experienced by many, if not most, mothers.

Our present society has a property basis. This has historically included the idea of women as being the property of men an idea profoundly affecting the self-image of men and women alike — man as controlling and woman as controlled. Such an idea overlays any "natural" similarities and differences between women and men. It also sabotages the possibility of respectful, loving relationships between the sexes.

Many women are trapped in abusive relationships because they do not have free access to alternative living quarters or the basic necessities for themselves and their children. A lot of misery is caused by anxiety and arguments about money management, especially amongst those at the lower end of the income scale.

Women and men alike fall prey to neurotic and addictive illnesses because they cannot cope with expectations placed on them to relate to and support others in a callous, blaming, unsupportive world. Such people have often begun adult life vulnerable because their own parents were themselves deprived and hence unable to provide physically, emotionally or both.

The list of present-day miseries is endless, especially if we also look beyond the sphere covered by this particular piece of writing.

How much happiness, pleasure and satisfaction might we find in a society geared simply to meeting everyone’s needs?

Men and women are similar in most respects but different when it comes to having babies. In this respect, men’s and women’s needs differ. In a world which is geared to meeting everyone’s needs, and not to making profit for a minority, there is hope for really meeting the different needs of women, men and children. Such a world is surely the best breeding ground for reliably good human relationships.

Nicky Snell

Problem of sexism (1993)

From the March 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before I was a socialist, I was a feminist. As for many women, the discrimination in favour of men was the most obvious and immediate. I gradually came to realize that this fitted into a far larger picture of racism, class oppression, ecological destruction. "third world” poverty, torture, starvation, colonialism, etc.

“From each according to his ability to each according to his need”, wrote Marx and, although calling women “he” raises another issue, this formula offers an answer to women's problems.

As things are, all around the world, women and women’s work are undervalued—by men, other women and themselves. This is serious, not just because of the damage inflicted on that particular half of the adult population, but also because it threatens the wellbeing of the whole human race.

Women’s oppression

In her book The War Against Women, Marilyn French writes:

Women’s gigantic task reproducing the human race, supporting and maintaining it, is specifically excluded from both Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP) statistics. Women are not counted as part of the labour force because they are not paid for their work, or because men take their wages or because their work is not considered work.

My own experience was one of near incredulity when after the birth of my first child, I found myself on duty 7 days a week, 24 hours a day and yet not in receipt of an independent income, or the limited sense of autonomy that comes with it.

A housewife in the West is running the equivalent of a small business—managing finance, meeting deadlines, maintaining good relations among those in her care, preparing regular meals, undertaking cleaning and maintenance work . . . She carries a large responsibility. Yet she will habitually be described as "not working”.

Another of women’s needs is the need to feel safe. Many people in the world do not feel safe. The specific problem for women is of being under threat from attack by men, most often in the context of their personal relationships. Both battering and rape occur most frequently with men with whom women are intimate or at least “friendly”. Such experience leaves women with a sense of "no safe place to go”:

Half the married men in Bangkok, Thailand, regularly beat their wives; in Quito Ecuador. 80 percent of all women report having been physically beaten; in Nicaragua, 44 percent of men admit they beat their wives and girlfriends . . .  In the United States, a man beats a woman every 12 seconds, and every day four of these beatings reach their final consummation, the death of the woman.

There is more . . .

As regards rape, Marilyn French points out:

It is especially difficult to counter men's sense that rape is legitimate, that it is their right. Both sexes are raised in a culture that, until recently, implicitly reinforced this idea. Rape within marriage or on a date was considered impossible; rape by a stranger was the victim's fault: she was out alone . . .  she was wearing the wrong clothes or shoes, she had a drink.

What to do?

From boyhood, writes Marilyn French,

males are bombarded with the message that ‘‘real" men dominate women, which means they control women’s behaviour . . . So powerful and pervasive is this formula for the appearance of manhood that a man with an equal, mutual, relationship with a woman may adopt a posture of dominance towards her when other men are around.

Why does ail of this happen? What can be done about it?

Marilyn French’s answer is caressed in the concluding sentence of her book: "After millenia of male war against them, women are fighting back on every front”.

But is it in fact the case that the vast majority of one half of the human race feels compelled to dominate the other half? If so, why? What does socialism have to offer women, that feminism does not?

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

Socialism involves a complete change in the way the whole of humanity organizes, itself, so that we have a system which provides goods and services because people need them and not because of money. There is no money and there is no property. Land is owned and controlled by the whole of humanity. There are no national boundaries. It must be highly organized, but in a genuinely democratic way. so that all people are involved in making decisions that affect their lives. There are no hierarchies. no distinctions of class, race or sex. 

Such a system seems like the impossible dream, but the potential for it is there. Even in capitalism, men and women can be fair and compassionate and co-operate with each other. People derive pleasure from working for themselves and others without monetary reward. What it will take is for the majority of people in the world to decide that this is how they want to live, and to set about organizing it.

Clearly the resistance to this from certain quarters may be great. The capitalists will not like it, initially at least—and if one half of the worlds population does feel compelled to dominate the other half, such an attitude will have to be challenged or socialism can not be achieved.

Men not the enemy

I became disenchanted with the feminism which holds patriarchy to be the world’s primary problem, because I did not like the logical conclusion to which this kind of thinking would lead. If men are simply women's worst enemies, what should we women do? Shoot men down in the street? Or simply withdraw'? What of hopes for shared childcare and housework? Many women, men and children would like men to be more, not less involved in their families.

It is true, many women are in severely oppressive situations at home and at work. Women get more than their fair share of the work, less than their fair share of the cake and less freedom than the men they share their lives with. Women are subordinate to men. Knowingly and unknowingly, men abuse the power they have over women—but not all men and not all the time.

Men also love and care for women, and work to support women and children. Some men have been women’s best friends at crucial times in their lives—and some men are subordinate to some women: a wealthy woman may hand out orders to a male wage-slave.

The problem of sexism is complex and linked to a larger problem; that of the way the whole world is organized.The majority of women and men in the world feel and are powerless in the face of the minority powers-that-be. Part of the problem of sexism is simply a "kicking the cat” syndrome. a white employed man, oppressed by his employer (or depressed by the dole queue) comes home and puts his wife in her place, for much the same reason that the pair of them will insult their black neighbours. It is an ignoble and inadequate solution to one’s own lack of self-esteem and autonomy, to undermine someone else’s. but without self-respect it is hard to respect others. A feeling of self-respect in our present system is for most people constantly under threat.

It is surely preferable for women to work with women and men to change the whole system than against men in the hope of changing just one aspect of it. Some men are sometimes women’s enemies—but so are some women. Many men and women are women's potential friends and allies.

I hope we can one day realize our potential for mutual respect and co-operation and create world socialism. Part and parcel of this process must be the shifting of patriarchy.

Nicky Snell

Single mothers and absent fathers (1994)

From the April 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women trying to solve the problem of male dominance by fighting men, and men who try to hang on to their historical dominant role are playing into the hands of the capitalist class, argues Nicky Snell

One of the government's recent scapegoats has been the single parent. An obvious target as single parents are mostly women and mostly poor. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for them, they have hung themselves with their own rope.

The stigmatized "unmarried mother" was in the early part of this century frequently given a life-sentence in a psychiatric institution. Her crime: partaking willingly or unwillingly in sexual intercourse outside of another repressive institution - marriage; and having the fortune or misfortune to conceive. She was labelled immoral, and even if not incarcerated in a psychiatric prison, would be sentenced to a life of shame. Such moral stigma hardly touched the male participant in the condemned sexual act.

To me, such an attitude seems incomprehensible. The human procreative process, including sexual pleasure and the ensuing arrival of a new and tiny human life, grown within the woman's body, has always seemed something worthy of celebration.

This is not to detract from the very real, sometimes devastating effects that such an arrival can have upon a woman's life. In those days, a pregnant woman, married or unmarried, was threatened with loss of life. Death as a result of childbirth was common. And as any committed parent knows, keeping a baby alive, let alone comfortable and content, involves an enormous amount of work. Even today, this work is not recognized for what it is. Parents caring for little children do not even have the comforts allocated to wage-slaves: a protected wage, tea breaks, lunch hours and regular time off duty though parents can gain something mostly denied to other wage-slaves. a deep satisfaction in the work.

In short, heterosexual sex makes babies, and women and men have a sex drive. Even now, no form of contraception, not even a sterilization operation, can be 100 percent relied upon. Human babies, being dependent for many years, require a lot of attention to keep them alive, happy and healthy, and providing the kind of environment where this is possible is not an easy task — certainly not within our present economic system. The traditional system of survival for babies, children and their carers is patriarchal monogamous marriage. The man takes the initiative in finding a wife. The woman must wait to be asked. The man then has free access to her body for the purposes of sexual satisfaction ("conjugal rights"). He also has a responsibility to provide and care for the woman and their resulting children. It is understood that such human qualities as love, compassion and altruism are required to make this palatable.

Up until the late sixties and seventies, anybody transgressing these guidelines was shamed and castigated, in particular the woman who enjoyed sexual pleasure outside marriage. The man who failed to provide for this family was treated with contempt.

The moralizing and shame served the capitalists well. It kept the majority of women and children within the framework of "The Family", largely dependent on the men who derived their income by slaving for the capitalist hierarchy. A man who feels duty-bound to feed his family in these circumstances is a man fearful of losing his job. Such a man is manipulable by capitalism.

The damaging effects of patriarchal monogamy led to a number of challenges.

The first concerned sexual repression. Sexuality is a very powerful drive within both men and women that seeks some form of release. For young adults it is new, strong and difficult to manage. The old way of dealing with it was to discuss it as little as possible and to keep young women and men apart. Homosexual activity was stamped on where possible. There were then accepted means for men and women to meet and arrive at the desired state of matrimony, within which sexuality could be expressed. Unfortunately the levels of repression and ignorance set up led to many people leading a life of sexual misery. Wilhelm Reich argued that there is a connection between sexual repression and fascism.

The second concerned the effect upon society of the expectation that a man should "control" his wife. This expectation sabotages potentially good relations between the sexes, leaving a man to a greater or lesser extent on guard and limiting a woman’s freedom of expression.

For example, a man whose wife spends "over" long talking to another man in a pub may be warned by his mates to "look out". He is seen to be not in control of his wife and pressured into unnecessary hostilities both with his wife and the man in question. Or a woman, who has some genuine grievance which needs discussing with her partner at an adult level, may be dismissed as "nagging". The man feels that to take her seriously is somehow to relinquish his masterful role.

The main challenge here has come from the women's liberation movement.

But we are still left with capitalism. Its present-day representatives in Britain, the Conservative Party, have been trying to re-instate patriarchal monogamy values by condemning single parents and forcing fathers back into the position of financially supporting families they have left behind. Whose purpose does this serve?

Firstly, many of the recent moves made by the government have to do with power and control. From the better-off to the worst-off — from doctors and university lecturers and teachers to schoolchildren and the unemployed — all are under far stricter surveillance than before. And control has to do with property. We are being reminded that we are not free. We are governed by the state which is an instrument of capitalism.

Secondly, the principle of "divide and conquer" is being brought to bear. Under pressure the working class tends to divide against itself. The government is helping this by encouraging scapegoating of particular sections of the working class single parents, absent fathers, etc.

Though many of us have been amused at the way the government's policies have backfired recently, these have nonetheless been having their effect. In a article entitled "Fathers who won't Pay", Yasmin Alibhai Brown writes in the February issue of Everywoman:

In a bar at the BBC Television Centre. I recently heard three slightly tipsy chaps ranting on about how men were now killing themselves because the state was making such massive and unjust demands on them to support the children of previous relationships. Words like ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt’ were flying around the crowded room.

Men are back to hating women and feminists resent the relative status of "middle- class" men. Once again the focus is away from the real source of the problem — a system in which the profits of the few come before the needs of the many, feminists and "middle-class" men included.

I can remember thinking, a few years back, that the movement of women and children onto the registers of the Social Security was a movement towards society taking collective responsibility for its children. It may have been, but it was also a movement towards the relative impoverishment of women and children.

Now the men are to be likewise impoverished with the arrival of the Child Support Agency, whose prime purpose is to save the state the money it now pays to women on Income Support by taking it from the fathers, which doesn't improve the living standard of the women by one iota. It is also a move to place the responsibility of providing for children back onto the shoulders of their biological fathers, who of course have to derive their income by slaving for the capitalist hierarchy.

For those women in the exhausting business of undertaking full-time paid work as well as raising children alone, there may be some improvement in living standards, but whether it is worth the resentment that accompany the extra money is a matter of some doubt. Where men are forced to part with their earnings to support women and children, there is almost a reversal of the old system: a man suffering the indignity of having his earnings deducted at source will feel himself to be the woman's property. Thus the battle of the sexes continues, with a twist to its tail.

The “sex war" is taking place now and represents a near 50/50 split in the world's population. It is not a simple affair, but one which has to be faced if we wish to achieve the free and truly democratic society we wish for.

It is not something that was started by feminists, neither is it something that will end either by their activities alone or by simply quieting them down. It started a very long time ago. No one knows exactly how or why it became such a universal practice for women to be treated as the property of men, but there appears to be a connection between this phenomenon and the use of slaves, the domestication of farm animals and the assumption of property rights over land.

Women, forced or educated into a subordinate role, cannot act in the world in an assertive and free way, and are unable to take up an active political stance alongside men. Subordinates often become manipulative and dishonest: the loyalty of a subordinate is usually tempered by resentment and is always fragile compared to the love and solidarity given to an equal friend or partner. Likewise, women trying to solve the problem of male dominance, by fighting men as the enemy, help to keep us divided, as do men who try to hang on to their historical dominant role.

We all, men and women alike, can end the division of the sexes through listening and learning and through changes in consciousness and behaviour in order to come together and fight the real enemy — the system geared to making financial profit for the few at the expense of the rest of us.

A humanity divided against itself cannot organize to create Socialism. A humanity linked by solidarity, friendship and respect can do just that.

Nicky Snell

The beauty myth (1993)

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Stay young and beautiful/If you want to be loved" runs the old song. Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth is, among other things, a book about the way women and men are manipulated by a system based on property and profit. She covers in depth the various manifestations of an imposed and unpredictable beauty ideal for women—at work, in the media, in health and most importantly as a hugely inappropriate low self-esteem felt by, probably, a majority of women.

Women have traditionally been seen to be vain, that is, overly concerned with their appearance. What has not been recognized is the extent to which this "vanity" is in fact a manifestation of a feeling of personal inadequacy. Women feel inadequate to the task of matching the latest fashionable ideal of "beauty", the achievement of which, alone, can make them feel acceptable—to their lovers, the world at large and to themselves.

This ideal has varied from the voluptuous Rubenesque-type figure to the anorexic "Twiggy" of the '60s and '70s. Whatever it is at any one time it can never be achieved by most women, since all women vary in size, shape and appearance.

Naomi Wolf puts the problem down to two phenomena—one is the power relation between men and women and the other is the demand of commerce. Women's lack of self-esteem serves any desire men may have to control women's lives, since someone with low self-esteem is more manipulable than someone who is confident. It also serves the demands of commerce, since the sale of beauty products and plastic surgery is dependent upon women feeling they are nor beautiful enough as they are.

Property relationship

Any desire on the part of men to control women's lives needs to be regarded seriously as it is a threat to the possibility of democracy and equality between all people and hence represents a serious obstacle to the achievement of socialism. From a young age, males are taught that in order to be "masculine", that is, in order to feel adequate, they must dominate women, or at the very least, appear to.

Keeping someone's self-esteem low is the one way of maintaining dominance and the impossible demands of the beauty myth serve this purpose well. The wish to dominate women is very much tied up with property. It is likely that, with the emergence of property society, women came to be regarded as men's property alongside land, animals, slaves and so on. One of the main features of a piece of property is that it (she) is under the owner's (his) control.

The property basis of relations between men and women is constantly under threat, since women are on the whole strong and intelligent human beings whom men often feel inclined to genuinely love and respect. The lengths to which societies have gone to keep women under control, are quite extraordinary—clitoradectomy, foot-binding, malnutrition, enforced childbearing, institutionalized wife-beating, death by stoning . . . the list is endless. The demands of "beauty" represent just one, primarily psychological, means of control.

The other thread of the problem is peculiar to late 20th century capitalism; the requirement of business to make money has led to the development of highly advanced psychological manipulative techniques. The beauty ideal is being thoroughly exploited in this respect.

Naomi Wolf has this to say on the subject of ageing in women:

When grey and white reflect in her hair  . . . you could call it silver or moonlight  . . . she is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.

The point of this passage is to show the extent to which we are usually manipulated into seeing the ageing process in a negative way. Men and women alike are conditioned to see "beauty" and hence "loveability" in a woman within the framework of an ideal which involves looking "young" and "slim". The extent to which women will go, and in some cases are expected to go, to try and fit this ideal, is frightening.

Commercial pressures

Cosmetic surgery in the USA is commonplace and is being commercially pushed in Europe. Cosmetic surgery involves a good deal of pain and actual damage to the human body. It has occasionally been fatal. It affects the physical health of the person undergoing it adversely. "If your ad revenue or your seven figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it [ageing in women] is an operable condition".

One of women's main enemies in this respect is ironically also one of women's best friends—the women's magazine. These days filled with articles and comment on interesting contemporary topics, the women's magazine unfortunately also reinforces that impossible, undermining expectation of beauty so thoroughly described by Naomi Wolf.

The main reason for this is 20th century capitalist commercial practice.

The magazines are dependent for revenue upon advertizing and the editorial content of the magazines must reflect this. A magazine which does not push "beauty" is threatened with loss of revenue from advertizing. Cosmetic surgery is the latest ghastly trend in this scenario.

This exemplifies capitalism's ultimate double bind—that, in order to meet people's needs, it must first be ruthless to them, since a business, or "going concern", must put money-making before all else in order to ensure its continued existence. And without its continued existence it cannot meet any human needs at all.

Naomi Wolf's proposed solution is another wave of feminism. Like the trades union movement, the feminist movements of this century have been useful in fighting for improved conditions within the framework of capitalism. However, as with trade unionism, feminism's successes are always under threat of sabotage or outright reversal. The real solution to women's oppression lies within a framework of a completely different economic system, one not based on property and the pursuit of profit.

Nicky Snell