Hugo Gellert: Karl Marx' 'Capital' in Lithographs
http://www.graphicwitness.org/contemp/marxtitle.htm Hugo Gellert: Karl Marx' 'Capital' in Lithographs
Dedication Foreword by Hugo Gellert Table of Contents Index
Capital title page
Published in 1934, a year earlier than Aesop Said So, Gellert's forward explains that this book is his "translation into graphic form of the revolutionary concepts of Das Kapital." The dedication reads:
TO THE MEMORY OF MY VERY DEAR BROTHER
Ernest Gellert
BRAVE AND FAITHFUL SOLDIER OF THE
PROLETARIAN CAUSE
Born at Budapest on January 12, 1896
Died in military confinement at Fort Hancock, N. J.
on March 8, 1918
FOREWORD
endpapers The use of the pyre, chamber of inquisition and the ax of the executioner are frantic efforts of a bankrupt society "to turn the wheels of history backwards". The outrages of the Masters of the "New" Germany evidence the extent of the decay of a run-down system. Italy, Hungary, Jugo-Slavia, Roumania, Poland, Japan, Nanking and Canton of China, suffer Governments the like of which existed only in the Dark Ages. The Corporate State (a carcass of the Corporate Town of the Middle Ages) is resurrected, and with it Feudal land decrees, religious persecution, serfdom.
In the "Democratic" countries -- U. S. A., England, France, etc., -- police clubs force the jobless millions to submit to starvation. In our America we live in a period of the greatest expropriation in history since we took the land from the Indian possessors. (Brave pioneers risked their lives for this land; now crafty bankers grab it, risking nothing.) Throughout our Southern states our black brothers have always known slavery. Under the N. R. A. President Roosevelt makes slaves of all workers with the aid of strike proof "labor unions," after the pattern of Mussolini. Our last vestige of protection against the rapacious Trusts is being removed.
"Savants" seriously talk of scrapping machines. They advocate a curb on inventions and scientific experiments. Cotton is destroyed. (Even the plow becomes an instrument of destruction.) Wheat is burned. Fruit is dumped into the ocean. Milk is poured into sewers, and hogs are slaughtered for fertilizer, while thousands of human beings die of hunger. The instruments of War are made ready to deal death and destruction.
Yesterday threatens to devour to-morrow.
But out of the East rises a new Prometheus. And all the Gods in the World cannot chain him! The great disciple of Karl Marx, Lenin, led the Russian workers and peasants who created the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. And these workers and peasants became the Masters of their own destiny. The Young Giant with his mighty hands builds the future of mankind and bright lights flare up in his wake....
The disinherited of the Earth are inspired by his example. They gain strength and courage and strike out for that higher form of society -- the New World: plenty for all, a place in the Sun for everybody. But no place will remain for Masters in a World where no one is privileged to despoil his fellowmen. Fascism is the Master's last desperate effort to retain power, to chain us to the past, to rob us of our birthright to the future, to bar us from creating a World worthy of Man.
"We are many--they are few.". . .
Das Kapital is our guide. Like the X-ray, it discloses the depths below the surface. it is my hope that in this abbreviated form the immortal work of Karl Marx will become accessible to the Masses: To the huge army of workers without jobs and farmers without land; to the workers in mills and mines, to all who toil with brain or brawn. This book is made for them. For my existence -- and yours, depends upon them: "Labor is a necessary condition of all human existence, and one which is independent of the forms of society. It is through all the ages a necessity imposed by nature itself, for without it there can be no interchange of material between man and nature -- in a word, no life."
The translation into graphic form of the revolutionary concepts of Das Kapital was a source of inspiration and stimulus. Other revolutionary artists will find in the works of our great working-class leaders--Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin--a wealth of material for their best creative efforts.
The heroism of the American revolutionary vanguard, the doffed struggles of the workers and farmers in spite of jail, tear-gas and bullets are the source of a new, vigorous art movement in America worthy of the tradition of John Reed--poet and brilliant journalist--a pioneer in American working class culture, a hero and a martyr of the victorious russian worker's revolution.
In this book only the most essential parts of the original text are given. But with the aid of the drawings the necessary material for the understanding of the fundamentals of Marxism is included.
HUGO GELLERT
White Plains, N. Y., November 7, 1933.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Stop stealing wages; Ventura supports min wage raise
Stop stealing wages
http://www.peoplesworld.org/gop-pushing-labor-department-to-go-easy-on-wage-theft/
http://www.peoplesworld.org/gop-pushing-labor-department-to-go-easy-on-wage-theft/
WASHINGTON - Right-wing Republicans who run the House Education...
peoplesworld.org
Jesse Ventura explains very clearly why we need to raise the minimum wage.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
For women's liberation: a comradely critique of the Manifesto
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/for-women-s-liberation-a-comradely-critique-of-the-manifesto/
By The Manifesto of the Communist Party,
every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the
materialist conception of history. The history of all human society,
since the breaking up of the ancient communes, is a history of class
struggles between oppressor and oppressed. Classes are groups that
associate in a division of labor to produce their material means of
existence. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels asserted an
elementary anthropological, or "human nature", rationale for this
conception. In a section titled "History: Fundamental Conditions" they
say:
Yet, it is fundamental in biology that the basic life sustaining processes of a species are twofold. There is, in the first place, obtaining the material means of life and subsistence, or survival, of the living generation ("production"). But just as fundamentally there is reproduction or success in creating a next generation of the species that is fertile, and survives until it too reproduces viable offspring. Whoever heard of a one generation species? In fact, one test of two individual animals being of the same species is their ability to mate and produce viable , FERTILE offspring. We can imagine a group of living beings with the ultimate success in eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. But if they do not reproduce, either they are not a species or they are an extinct species (unless they are immortal). Thus, having premised their theory in part on human biology, our "species-being", Marx and Engels were obligated to develop historical materialism, the theory of the Manifesto, based not only on the logic of subsistence production, but also on the logic of next generation reproduction.
In The German Ideology, they do recognize reproduction as a "fundamental condition of history" along with production. However, they give reproduction, or at least, "the family" a subordinate "fundamental" status when they say:
history, equally fundamental with the mode of production in shaping society. This is true even after classes arise, even with the "new social relations" that come with "increased population." For there to be history in the sense of many generations of men and women all of the way up to Marx, Engels and us today, men had to do more than "begin to make other men." Women and men had to complete making next generations by sexually uniting and rearing them for thousands of years. Otherwise history would have ended long ago. We would be an extinct species. An essential characteristic of history is its existence in the "medium" of multiple generations. Thus, with respect to historical materialism, reproduction is as necessary as production. The upshot is women's liberation must be put on the same footing with workers' liberation in the Marxist project.
Not only did Marx and Engels in The German Ideology give reproduction a "subordinate" fundamental status compared with production. They did it by the following sleight of hand: in part population increase or the success of reproduction somehow makes reproduction less important in "entering into historical development" as a "fundamental condition" (or "primary historical relation" in another translation, or "basic aspect of social activity" in another).
This is quite a misogynist dialectic, given that "men" are in the first premise and the third premise, but women only are mentioned explicitly in the latter. It is also an idealist philosophical error, because the theory now tends to abstract from the real social life of individuals in reproduction. Another passage in The German Ideology demonstrates the same sort of magical rather than scientific use of "dialectic" with respect to reproduction, and in this case the impact on the materialist philosophical consistency of their argument is more direct and explicit. They say:
In this paragraph, we see that Marx and Engels's early formulation and explanation of the origin of what Engels later famously dubbed the fundamental question of philosophy (materialism or idealism?) is rooted in the "second" original division of labor. For some reason, the "first" original division of labor, which gives women equivalent complementary status with men, just disappears and is replaced by a productive division of labor, between "men's" minds and hands. And to make it worse, once again, the "reason" the reproductive division of labor disappears as an ongoing fundamental determinant throughout history is its own success in creating a population explosion. This seems to be an error of substituting a negative and destructive dialectic in thought for what is the most fundamentally positive and fruitful dialectic in human history--reproduction. Here is a key connecting point: then Marx and Engels (whom I love dearly) substitute for the reproductive division of labor a productive division of labor as the fundamentally determining contradiction of historical development. This division of labor, between predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor, becomes the root of development of classes, the importance of which is declared in the first sentence of the Manifesto.
Yet, Marx and Engels commit the same error of abstraction at one level that they criticize at the next level: the error of mental laborers in abstracting from the concrete reality of physical labor. In addition, they keep depending on "population increase", which is another name for reproduction and "the sexual act", to explain the origin of increased "productivity" and "needs". These, in turn, seem to be the "premises" for the division between material and mental labor (and are because of the role of material surpluses in making possible the creation of the class of predominantly mental laborers). Thus, we might say that the original idealist philosophical inconsistency of Marxist materialism is abstraction from reproduction. For a fuller historical materialism, the theories of workers' liberation and women's liberation must be integrated. This may be done on the basis of Marx and Engels's fundamental logic carried out more consistently. Feminism, therefore, is derived from, not added on to, the original premises.
By 1884, with the impact of anthropological studies (and perhaps greater interaction with women in his maturity) in the Preface to the First Edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels says:
Even under capitalism, many of the social relations and institutions that are quantitatively greater then those in the "nuclear" family (See anthropologist G.P. Murdock on the "nuclear" family) are part of reproduction, such as school and training, as well as medical services and recreation. More importantly, reproduction and production have qualitatively different functions, both fundamental in constituting the existence of our species, our species-being. In other words, not only are reproductive relations not quantitatively less important in determining history, but from the beginning, from the true original division of labor as in the sexual act, reproduction has had a qualitatively, necessarily complementary relation with production in creating history. From the standpoint of our uniquely human character (our culture), it might be said that production makes objects and reproduction creates subjects.
Thus, problems in dealing with subjectivity in the history of Marxism (see my "Activist Materialism and the ' End ' of Philosophy") may in part be remedied by rethinking Marxism based on equating and even privileging reproduction over production in interpreting and acting to change the world.
This becomes especially important when we consider that there is now for Marxism a scientific, materialist, truth-seeking and urgent need for intellectual affirmative action in using empirical study of reproduction to re-explain history to compensate for the sole focus on production. Reproduction has always been scientifically coequal, as demonstrated by Marx and Engels's clipped comments and "admissions" quoted previously. They never refute their own words about the importance of reproduction in historical materialist theory. They simply (and uncharacteristically) fail to develop one of their own stated fundamental materialist premises. Living Marxists must creatively redevelop historical materialism based on this compensation.
Dialectical materialism holds that the relationship between subject and object is dialectical, of course. It is "vulgar" materialism that portrays the subject as one-sidedly determined by the object. Reproduction and production are complementary opposites, and their unity in struggle is the fundamental motive force of history today as in ancient times.
However, when I say "reproduction creates subjects", I mean reproduction in a broader sense than only sexual conception and birth. Reproduction includes all child-rearing, from the home through all school and any other type of training. It is all "caring labor" as defined by Hilary Graham in "Caring: A Labour of Love" (1983). Reproduction is all of those labors that have, as a direct and main purpose, making and caring for a human subject or personality as contrasted with those labors of production which have as a direct purpose making objects useful to humans. Reproduction includes affirmative self-creation.
A wikipedia item gives a fuller definition of what I call "caring labor".
Production makes objects; reproduction creates subjects. This conception of reproduction is consistent with Marx's basic reasoning in Capital. In his famous development of the concept of the labor theory of value (beyond Adam Smith and Ricardo) and surplus value, he asserts that human labor is the only source of new value in the production process. The human laborer and the means of production (tools and raw materials) all add exchange value to a commodity. But the means of production add no more value to the commodity than the values added to them by a previous human laborer in the production of the means of production. The human labor power is the only element in the process that can add more value to the commodity than the values that went into producing the labor power itself. The labor of a worker in one-half day (or now one-quarter of a day) produces enough value to pay for the necessities creating the worker's labor power for a full day's work. The value produced by the worker in the second half of the day is the surplus value exploited by the capitalist. The creation of the worker's labor power is done in reproduction, in the broad sense we have been using that concept here. Thus, reproduction is the "only source" of the only source of new value. Subjectivity is the "source" of the unique ability (over the means of production) of the human component in the production process to produce more value than went into producing it.
Subjectivity is the source of a sort of Marxist "mind over matter." Reproduction is the source of subjectivity. In relation to the discussion of the primacy of reproduction as the original division of labor (as Marx and Engels said) over the division of predominantly material and predominantly mental labor, we might deduce that it was (and is) within reproduction that the mind and matter are non-antagonistically related as opposites (when "men" were simultaneously theoreticians in their practice as mentioned in "The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844").
Sociology and common experience teach that historically, women have been the primary reproductive laborers - from childrearing to housework, from elementary and high school teaching to nursing. Beyond pregnancy, women's "assignment" to reproductive roles is historically and ideologically caused, not biologically or genetically caused or necessary (see, for example, Not in Our Genes, by Richard Lewontin, et al.). But as a result, women are, historically, an exploited and oppressed reproductive class, whose defining labor is as fundamental to our material life as that of the productive laborers on whom Marx and Engels focused. Thus, the materialist conception of history and the new Red Feather Manifesto, must be modified, and women's liberation put on equal footing with workers'(women's and men's) liberation in the Marxist project. It is especially incumbent on male Marxists to be and to be known as champions of feminism.
----
Charles Brown is a political activist in Detroit, Michigan. He has degrees in anthropology, and is a member of the bar. His favorite slogan is "All Power to the People!"
Marx did write the following in 1844: "In the approach to woman as the spoil and hand-maid of communal lust is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct and natural species-relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. In this natural species-relationship man’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature – his own natural destination. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence of man. From this relationship one can therefore judge man’s whole level of development. From the character of this relationship follows how much man as a species-being, as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behaviour has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence – the extent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him. This relationship also reveals the extent to which man’s need has become a human need; the extent to which, therefore, the other person as a person has become for him a need – the extent to which he in his individual existence is at the same time a social being." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
"... life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of material life itself. And indeed this is a ... fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life."Production and economic classes are the starting point of Marxist analysis of human society, including in the Manifesto, because human life, like all plant and animal life must fulfill biological needs to exist as life at all. Whatever, humans do that is "higher" than plants and animals, we cannot do if we do not first fulfill our plant/animal like needs. Therefore, the "higher" human activities are limited by the productive activities. This means that historical materialism starts with human nature, our natural species qualities.
Yet, it is fundamental in biology that the basic life sustaining processes of a species are twofold. There is, in the first place, obtaining the material means of life and subsistence, or survival, of the living generation ("production"). But just as fundamentally there is reproduction or success in creating a next generation of the species that is fertile, and survives until it too reproduces viable offspring. Whoever heard of a one generation species? In fact, one test of two individual animals being of the same species is their ability to mate and produce viable , FERTILE offspring. We can imagine a group of living beings with the ultimate success in eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. But if they do not reproduce, either they are not a species or they are an extinct species (unless they are immortal). Thus, having premised their theory in part on human biology, our "species-being", Marx and Engels were obligated to develop historical materialism, the theory of the Manifesto, based not only on the logic of subsistence production, but also on the logic of next generation reproduction.
In The German Ideology, they do recognize reproduction as a "fundamental condition of history" along with production. However, they give reproduction, or at least, "the family" a subordinate "fundamental" status when they say:
"The third circumstance, which from the very outset, enters into historical development, is that men, who daily remake their own life begin to make other men, to propagate their kind: the relation between man and woman, parents and children, the family. The family, which to begin with is the only social relationship, becomes later, when increased needs create new social relations and the increased population new needs, a subordinate one..."My thesis in this comradely critique is that the mode of reproduction (in the broad sense, including, but not limited to social institutions called "the family") of human beings remains, throughout human
history, equally fundamental with the mode of production in shaping society. This is true even after classes arise, even with the "new social relations" that come with "increased population." For there to be history in the sense of many generations of men and women all of the way up to Marx, Engels and us today, men had to do more than "begin to make other men." Women and men had to complete making next generations by sexually uniting and rearing them for thousands of years. Otherwise history would have ended long ago. We would be an extinct species. An essential characteristic of history is its existence in the "medium" of multiple generations. Thus, with respect to historical materialism, reproduction is as necessary as production. The upshot is women's liberation must be put on the same footing with workers' liberation in the Marxist project.
Not only did Marx and Engels in The German Ideology give reproduction a "subordinate" fundamental status compared with production. They did it by the following sleight of hand: in part population increase or the success of reproduction somehow makes reproduction less important in "entering into historical development" as a "fundamental condition" (or "primary historical relation" in another translation, or "basic aspect of social activity" in another).
This is quite a misogynist dialectic, given that "men" are in the first premise and the third premise, but women only are mentioned explicitly in the latter. It is also an idealist philosophical error, because the theory now tends to abstract from the real social life of individuals in reproduction. Another passage in The German Ideology demonstrates the same sort of magical rather than scientific use of "dialectic" with respect to reproduction, and in this case the impact on the materialist philosophical consistency of their argument is more direct and explicit. They say:
"Only now, after having considered four moments, four aspects of primary historical relations, do we find that man also possesses "consciousness". But even from the outset this is not "pure" consciousness. The "mind" is from the outset afflicted with the curse of being "burdened" with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness...language like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men...Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious... This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives further development or extension through increased productivity, the increase in needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase in population. With these there develops the division of labor, which was originally nothing but the division of labor in the sexual act, then the division of labor which develops spontaneously or "naturally" by virtue of natural predisposition (e.g. physical strength, needs, accidents, etc.) Division of labor becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labor appears. From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real (as the semioticians' signifier is arbitrarily related to what it signifies-C.B); from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to formation of "pure" theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc."
In this paragraph, we see that Marx and Engels's early formulation and explanation of the origin of what Engels later famously dubbed the fundamental question of philosophy (materialism or idealism?) is rooted in the "second" original division of labor. For some reason, the "first" original division of labor, which gives women equivalent complementary status with men, just disappears and is replaced by a productive division of labor, between "men's" minds and hands. And to make it worse, once again, the "reason" the reproductive division of labor disappears as an ongoing fundamental determinant throughout history is its own success in creating a population explosion. This seems to be an error of substituting a negative and destructive dialectic in thought for what is the most fundamentally positive and fruitful dialectic in human history--reproduction. Here is a key connecting point: then Marx and Engels (whom I love dearly) substitute for the reproductive division of labor a productive division of labor as the fundamentally determining contradiction of historical development. This division of labor, between predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor, becomes the root of development of classes, the importance of which is declared in the first sentence of the Manifesto.
Yet, Marx and Engels commit the same error of abstraction at one level that they criticize at the next level: the error of mental laborers in abstracting from the concrete reality of physical labor. In addition, they keep depending on "population increase", which is another name for reproduction and "the sexual act", to explain the origin of increased "productivity" and "needs". These, in turn, seem to be the "premises" for the division between material and mental labor (and are because of the role of material surpluses in making possible the creation of the class of predominantly mental laborers). Thus, we might say that the original idealist philosophical inconsistency of Marxist materialism is abstraction from reproduction. For a fuller historical materialism, the theories of workers' liberation and women's liberation must be integrated. This may be done on the basis of Marx and Engels's fundamental logic carried out more consistently. Feminism, therefore, is derived from, not added on to, the original premises.
By 1884, with the impact of anthropological studies (and perhaps greater interaction with women in his maturity) in the Preface to the First Edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels says:
"According to the materialistic conception, the decisive element of history is pre-eminently the production and reproduction of life and its material requirements. This implies, on the one hand, the production of the means of existence (food, clothing, shelter and the necessary tools); on the other hand, the generation of children, the propagation of the species. The social institutions, under which the people of a certain historical period and of a certain country are living, are dependent on these tow forms of production; partly on the development of labor, partly on that of the family."The change in this formulation from that in The German Ideology supports our fundamental thesis in this essay: that reproduction is an equally fundamental, not a subordinate, process with production in shaping society from its origins to modern (and post-modern) times. But Engels's formulation in The Origin is after Marx's death and late in their heroic joint project in developing Marxism. Thus, the main classic writings of Marxism, and Marx and Engels's political activity, focused on production and political economy, not the family and the other institutions of reproduction. The Origin's is the best scientific formulation of the materialistic conception of history, even when we consider that "the family" is, in later stages of history, surrounded by larger social institutions, as asserted in the passage from The German Ideology, quoted above.
Even under capitalism, many of the social relations and institutions that are quantitatively greater then those in the "nuclear" family (See anthropologist G.P. Murdock on the "nuclear" family) are part of reproduction, such as school and training, as well as medical services and recreation. More importantly, reproduction and production have qualitatively different functions, both fundamental in constituting the existence of our species, our species-being. In other words, not only are reproductive relations not quantitatively less important in determining history, but from the beginning, from the true original division of labor as in the sexual act, reproduction has had a qualitatively, necessarily complementary relation with production in creating history. From the standpoint of our uniquely human character (our culture), it might be said that production makes objects and reproduction creates subjects.
Thus, problems in dealing with subjectivity in the history of Marxism (see my "Activist Materialism and the ' End ' of Philosophy") may in part be remedied by rethinking Marxism based on equating and even privileging reproduction over production in interpreting and acting to change the world.
This becomes especially important when we consider that there is now for Marxism a scientific, materialist, truth-seeking and urgent need for intellectual affirmative action in using empirical study of reproduction to re-explain history to compensate for the sole focus on production. Reproduction has always been scientifically coequal, as demonstrated by Marx and Engels's clipped comments and "admissions" quoted previously. They never refute their own words about the importance of reproduction in historical materialist theory. They simply (and uncharacteristically) fail to develop one of their own stated fundamental materialist premises. Living Marxists must creatively redevelop historical materialism based on this compensation.
Dialectical materialism holds that the relationship between subject and object is dialectical, of course. It is "vulgar" materialism that portrays the subject as one-sidedly determined by the object. Reproduction and production are complementary opposites, and their unity in struggle is the fundamental motive force of history today as in ancient times.
However, when I say "reproduction creates subjects", I mean reproduction in a broader sense than only sexual conception and birth. Reproduction includes all child-rearing, from the home through all school and any other type of training. It is all "caring labor" as defined by Hilary Graham in "Caring: A Labour of Love" (1983). Reproduction is all of those labors that have, as a direct and main purpose, making and caring for a human subject or personality as contrasted with those labors of production which have as a direct purpose making objects useful to humans. Reproduction includes affirmative self-creation.
A wikipedia item gives a fuller definition of what I call "caring labor".
"Care work is a sub-category of work that includes all tasks thatUnder capitalism with alienation, production's impact in making subjects is primarily "negative" or indirect. Conversely, reproduction indirectly makes objects, in the sense that the subject, the human laborer, who is the direct and "positive" purpose of reproduction, is the possessor of labor power, the active factor making objects in production (directly).
directly involve care processes done in service of others. Often, it
is differentiated from other forms of work because it is intrinsically
motivated, meaning that people are motivated to pursue care work for
internal reasons, not related to money.[1] Another factor that is
often used to differentiate caring labor from other types of work is
the motivating factor. This perspective defines care labor as labor
undertaken out of affection or a sense of responsibility for other
people, with no expectation of immediate pecuniary reward.[2] Despite
the importance of this intrinsic motivation factor, care work includes
care activities done for pay as well as those done without
remuneration.
Specifically, care work refers to those occupations that provide
services that help people develop their capabilities, or their ability
to pursue the aspects of their life that they value. Examples of these
occupations include child care, all levels of teaching (from preschool
through university professors), and health care of all types (nurses,
doctors, physical therapists and psychologists).[3] Care work also
includes the array of domestic unpaid work that is often
disproportionately done by women.[4]
Often, care work focuses on the responsibilities to provide for
dependents--children, the sick, and the elderly.[5] However, care work
also refers to any work done in the immediate service of others,
regardless of the recipient's dependent or nondependent status.
Care work is becoming a popular topic for academic study and
discussion. This study is closely linked with the field of feminist
economics and is associated with scholars including Nancy Folbre,
Paula England, Maria Floro, Diane Elson, Caren Grown and Virginia
Held" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Care_work
Production makes objects; reproduction creates subjects. This conception of reproduction is consistent with Marx's basic reasoning in Capital. In his famous development of the concept of the labor theory of value (beyond Adam Smith and Ricardo) and surplus value, he asserts that human labor is the only source of new value in the production process. The human laborer and the means of production (tools and raw materials) all add exchange value to a commodity. But the means of production add no more value to the commodity than the values added to them by a previous human laborer in the production of the means of production. The human labor power is the only element in the process that can add more value to the commodity than the values that went into producing the labor power itself. The labor of a worker in one-half day (or now one-quarter of a day) produces enough value to pay for the necessities creating the worker's labor power for a full day's work. The value produced by the worker in the second half of the day is the surplus value exploited by the capitalist. The creation of the worker's labor power is done in reproduction, in the broad sense we have been using that concept here. Thus, reproduction is the "only source" of the only source of new value. Subjectivity is the "source" of the unique ability (over the means of production) of the human component in the production process to produce more value than went into producing it.
Subjectivity is the source of a sort of Marxist "mind over matter." Reproduction is the source of subjectivity. In relation to the discussion of the primacy of reproduction as the original division of labor (as Marx and Engels said) over the division of predominantly material and predominantly mental labor, we might deduce that it was (and is) within reproduction that the mind and matter are non-antagonistically related as opposites (when "men" were simultaneously theoreticians in their practice as mentioned in "The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844").
Sociology and common experience teach that historically, women have been the primary reproductive laborers - from childrearing to housework, from elementary and high school teaching to nursing. Beyond pregnancy, women's "assignment" to reproductive roles is historically and ideologically caused, not biologically or genetically caused or necessary (see, for example, Not in Our Genes, by Richard Lewontin, et al.). But as a result, women are, historically, an exploited and oppressed reproductive class, whose defining labor is as fundamental to our material life as that of the productive laborers on whom Marx and Engels focused. Thus, the materialist conception of history and the new Red Feather Manifesto, must be modified, and women's liberation put on equal footing with workers'(women's and men's) liberation in the Marxist project. It is especially incumbent on male Marxists to be and to be known as champions of feminism.
----
Charles Brown is a political activist in Detroit, Michigan. He has degrees in anthropology, and is a member of the bar. His favorite slogan is "All Power to the People!"
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Posted by Nat Turner, 08/07/2014 10:17am (3 days ago)
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The present writer logged a lengthy comment yesterday, that now seems "lost in cyberspace" (however it did, before its lost, appear in the RSS feed).
As written in that comment, brother Charles Johnson has a logical point in many ways, his premise solid.
As also written there, we can all agree on his conclusion that:
"It is especially incumbent on male Marxists to be and to be known as champions of feminism."
So much so, we must fight for female male equality and in sharing drudgery in domestic, subjective and reproductive work, including child care, as pointed out by brother Brown.
In the middle of Brown's essay he writes: "For a fuller historical materialism, the theories of workers' liberation and women's liberation must be integrated. This may be done on the basis of Marx and Engel's fundamental logic carried out more consistently. Feminism, therefore, is derived from, not added on to, the original premises."
Origen of the Family, named in Brown's essay, developed from the work of American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan-and the genius of Karl Marx-it is part of the original premise-along with Engel's The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, both of which place labor (not sexuality) as the touchstone to the historical process that is historical materialism. In this process, matrilineal descent and matrilocal property were discovered as historical fact.
"Labor Omnia Vinci", which is why we will continue to see the bold and genius leadership of a Elizabeth Flynn, a Claudia Jones, a Shirley Graham Du Bois, and an Angela Yvonne Davis.
To take from Sterling Brown's poem "Strong Men"-Strong women, "keep coming".
As our W. E. B. Du Bois would say, women are men-despite men's self absorption and male God(gods), our self-debasement as men-as we condone oftentimes, the failing attempt to exploit and oppress women.Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 07/30/2014 11:07am (11 days ago)
Marx did write the following in 1844: "In the approach to woman as the spoil and hand-maid of communal lust is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct and natural species-relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. In this natural species-relationship man’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature – his own natural destination. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence of man. From this relationship one can therefore judge man’s whole level of development. From the character of this relationship follows how much man as a species-being, as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behaviour has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence – the extent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him. This relationship also reveals the extent to which man’s need has become a human need; the extent to which, therefore, the other person as a person has become for him a need – the extent to which he in his individual existence is at the same time a social being." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/for-women-s-liberation-a-comradely-critique-of-the-manifesto/
Women want everyone tto prosper--because it can be lonely at the top.
www.politicalaffairs.net
I thought Rosie was too busy at the factory to be lookin' after those babies.
From
experience I found out many women want to keep the power which is
raising children even as they earn more than you. truly superwomen
ideals.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander; lifting me as they climb over me.
Women want everyone to prosper--because it can be lonely at the top.
They're
inclined to take care of _everybody_, and many manage to take care of
themselves in the process; women's life expectancy is longer than mens' :
superwomen.
POLICE CRIMES AND LYNCHING
By Frank Chapman, Field Secretary
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
The murder of Eric Gardner in New York this past week brings to mind how lynching as a method of social control and a weapon of political reaction is still alive and still perpetrated in the name of law and order and maintaining racial oppression. Look at the white vigilante groups on the border threatening violence to Mexican children, and look at the wanton, senseless murder of African Americans and Latinos by the police in our cities and you can clearly see that lynching is the heart-beat of reactionary, racist politics in this land. We see racist attitudes everywhere from blatant racist attacks against President Obama to blaming African American and Latino families for inner city violence to vigilante murder of black children to the sidewalk murder of Eric Gardner by a gang of white police officers. Lynching is traditionally defined as the extra-judicial murder of someone by mob action.
Historically, in the South, lynching has always been the result of the actual or perceived loss of white privilege and is associated with the re-imposition of white supremacy after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. In the Northeast and West lynching was used against U.S. and foreign born workers (remember Joe Hill) to keep them from organizing unions for better pay and working conditions. The San Francisco Vigilance Movement often mounted mob violence against the Irish, Chinese and Mexican communities.
Also black and white civil rights workers were lynched in the South during the 1960s. According to the Tuskegee Institute 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 whites were lynched between 1882 and 1968. In the same period about 200 anti-lynch bills were introduced into Congress and only three passed in the House of Representatives. None passed in the Senate. June 13, 2005 the United States Senate apologized for its failure to enact an anti-lynching law. With a voice vote of 80 senators the U.S. Senate passed a resolution formally apologizing for its failure to pass an anti-lynch bill when it was most needed. The resolution expressed, in part, “…the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States.”
What has happened in the last nine years since this Senate Resolution of a formal apology? Police and vigilantes have continued to kill African Americans and Latinos with impunity and the federal government has not taken any consistent actions to stop this new style lynching by the police. Since 9/11, 5000 people have been killed by the police (compare this with the 4,743 lynched between 1882 and 1968) and needless to say they have been disproportionately people of color.
Randall Kerrick, a Charlotte, N.C. police officer, earned infamy in September, 2013 when he shot Jonathan Ferrell, 24, a former Florida A&M football player, 10 times in the middle of the night. Ferrell had crashed his car in what police called "a pretty serious accident," and he was reportedly seeking help while in distress. After a nearby homeowner called police, Ferrell staggered toward the officers who arrived on the scene. That's when Kerrick shot the man. Again: 10 times. January this year a grand jury refused to indict Kerrick for murder.
But the situation with Eric Gardner, the young man just killed by a gang of police in Staten Island in broad daylight, the case cited above and the police killing of a 16 year child in Chicago over the July 4th weekend are not isolated incidents or occasional breakdowns in the system. There is a definable racist pattern and we see it clearly when we look at the stats. For example, from 2009 to 2013 there were 267 police shootings. 75.3% of those shot were African American. (These figures are taken from Independent Police Review Authority reports here in Chicago).
The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression has launched a campaign for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) and I submit that this CPAC campaign is in reality the equivalent of an anti-lynch campaign. We say this because the police and vigilantes are operating under the color of state laws to do the same thing that lynch mobs did and often with the same racist fervor. In point of fact when George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin he (Zimmerman) was supported by a white racist mob organized by right wing extremist that raised nearly a million dollars for his defense fund.
In the period January 1, 2009 to June 30, 2014 there have been 86 people killed by Chicago police officers acting under the color of law. They (the people killed) were among the more than 294 people shot by police officers. African Americans were 78.1 per cent of the shooting victims and Latinos were 13.2 per cent, while 7.1 percent were white.
Police crimes of murder and torture have been made acceptable police practices in spite of the public outrage against them. The politicians and the fraternal order of police justify these lynch like tactics by criminalizing the entire African and Latino communities. All people of color are suspects.
If we are to avoid morphing into a fascist state then we must stop this present state of siege in our communities by fighting for community control of the police. Police repression is an integral part of racial oppression and that is why people of color can’t just call for the police to police the police or for federal intervention. The best intervention is the democratic intervention of the masses and that is why we must fight for a Civilian Police Accountability Council that will be elected by the residents of any given police district. This elected body would not be a police review board but a police control board.
Ted Nugent is standing up to the liberal America-haters! For the lying...
alan.com
Monday, July 28, 2014
I'll tell you what's not American: Not respecting Majority rule .
That's the
definition of American democracy. When you lose, you don't act like a
poor loser, because it's unAmerican. Obama won two AMERICAN majority
votes for President, and the unAmerican Republicans will not obey the
will of the majority of American voters; keep trying to prevent the
majority elected President from carrying out Presidential duties and
responsibilities.
Not respecting majority rule is unAmerican , but actually Republicans have been stealing rule from Democrats since the Ken Starr special prosecutor was allowed to fly; Then Bush stole two elections from the majority
So, the US has had growing minority rule for twenty years.
Not respecting majority rule is unAmerican , but actually Republicans have been stealing rule from Democrats since the Ken Starr special prosecutor was allowed to fly; Then Bush stole two elections from the majority
So, the US has had growing minority rule for twenty years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/wanna-know-why-republican_b_5627073.html
Nicole Rigano I
had to do it after 9/11, when my husband got so desperately tired of my
Bush-bashing. He has since seen the light, although I STILL think it
was patriotic of me to zip my lip in a time like the days following 9/11
(on the one hand, at least).
The very LEAST the right could do is quit trying to undermine our country, our president, our very unity and appreciation of our system.
The very LEAST the right could do is quit trying to undermine our country, our president, our very unity and appreciation of our system.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/07/republicans-still-holding-virtually-all-obama-appointments
→ Congress
Republicans Still Holding Up Virtually All Obama Appointments
| Wed Jul. 30, 2014 1:52 AM EDT
Jonathan
Bernstein notes today that although filibuster reform has technically
given Democrats the ability to confirm any executive branch appointment,
in practice Republicans can still tie up the Senate by insisting on
lengthy parliamentary delays for every nominee. And that's what they're doing:
Bernstein says in another post today that he's tired of hearing about political polarization. It's not really anything new, after all. That's true enough, and this is a good example. It's not a case of polarization, it's just a straightforward case of assholery. There's no principle or ideology behind this, they're merely causing dysfunction for the sake of causing dysfunction. Welcome to the modern GOP.
Senate Republicans continue to impose an across-the-board virtual hold on every executive branch nomination....Republican foot-dragging has created a backlog of more than 100 nominees, almost none of whom are controversial, and some of whom have been waiting since January for Senate floor action.Pretty much. But this is what they've been doing all along. The point of filibustering everything and everyone has never been just to prevent a few objectionable candidates from being confirmed. It's been to tie up Senate floor time and disrupt even the routine functioning of a federal government that's under Democratic control. Even with filibuster reform they can still do that, so why should they stop now? A broken government is nothing but good news for Republicans.
....I understand that Republicans are upset about the Democrats' filibuster reform. It has robbed them of leverage over nominations — even if it's entirely their own fault for having abused that leverage. But Republicans aren’t harming Senate majority leader Harry Reid by blocking nominations. They’re harming the functioning of the U.S. government. (Perhaps it might be nice to have ambassadors appointed in a few important nations?) And they are needlessly, cruelly, messing with people’s lives. On top of all that, they’re eliminating the leverage of individual Senators. As Ted Cruz (maybe) just learned, there’s no point putting an individual hold on a nomination that is already being held up by the entire Republican caucus.
And why? For the sake, as far as I can tell, of a tantrum.
Bernstein says in another post today that he's tired of hearing about political polarization. It's not really anything new, after all. That's true enough, and this is a good example. It's not a case of polarization, it's just a straightforward case of assholery. There's no principle or ideology behind this, they're merely causing dysfunction for the sake of causing dysfunction. Welcome to the modern GOP.
The question remains: Why do Republicans come back, over and over, to...
huffingtonpost.com
Welfare is Patriotic; Wall Street is a political institution.
What is the purpose of America ?
Spending gov'ment money on welfare is one of the Purposes of America as spelled out in
our Constitution's Preamble and Powers of Congress.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It's anti-American to oppose Welfare spending.
Unpatriotic , as in opposed to the Founding Fathers' vision of what
the Gov'mnt is supposed to do.
So, the Welfare spending Obama has done
is Patriotic.
Not only that , as has been well known since the teachings of the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, welfare spending helps "the" economy, that is the economy as a whole,because it increases
mass effective demand. The deficit and debt are red herring issues. A
national budget is _not_ like a household budget. This is
fundamentally economically incorrect. The ratio of fed gov'mnt debt to
GDP in the early fifties was very high, in historical terms and it led
to what is now considered a Golden Age economically the 1950's to the
late 60's. The tax rate on the 1% of that era was very high; the
highest rate was 90%. High taxes on the rich and high gov'mnt spending
are recommended by American history.
Further more , this is a private enterprise system. The main decisions
that determine booms and busts in the business cycle, recoveries and recessions,
are the decisions
of the private corporations ,not the gov'mnt, not the President and
Congress.
It is not the economy ,stupid. Rather it is not the President, but
the 1% as a class that run "the" economy.
Even George Bush is not mainly responsible for the economic crash.
Wall Street is. GM and Chrysler's , and other private company
decisions put Michigan into one state recession for many years
starting from the early 2000's That wasn't determined by the policies
of Bush or Engler; and I am not a fan them. This is not a gov'mnt
controlled economy, so gov'mnt can't be made the main target of
criticism's regarding the Great Recession and high unemployment. Thus,
the Occupy Wall Street protests at the correct location in protesting the
private enterprise symbolic center.
Wall Street is our dominant political institution
Spending gov'ment money on welfare is one of the Purposes of America as spelled out in
our Constitution's Preamble and Powers of Congress.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It's anti-American to oppose Welfare spending.
Unpatriotic , as in opposed to the Founding Fathers' vision of what
the Gov'mnt is supposed to do.
So, the Welfare spending Obama has done
is Patriotic.
Not only that , as has been well known since the teachings of the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, welfare spending helps "the" economy, that is the economy as a whole,because it increases
mass effective demand. The deficit and debt are red herring issues. A
national budget is _not_ like a household budget. This is
fundamentally economically incorrect. The ratio of fed gov'mnt debt to
GDP in the early fifties was very high, in historical terms and it led
to what is now considered a Golden Age economically the 1950's to the
late 60's. The tax rate on the 1% of that era was very high; the
highest rate was 90%. High taxes on the rich and high gov'mnt spending
are recommended by American history.
Further more , this is a private enterprise system. The main decisions
that determine booms and busts in the business cycle, recoveries and recessions,
are the decisions
of the private corporations ,not the gov'mnt, not the President and
Congress.
It is not the economy ,stupid. Rather it is not the President, but
the 1% as a class that run "the" economy.
Even George Bush is not mainly responsible for the economic crash.
Wall Street is. GM and Chrysler's , and other private company
decisions put Michigan into one state recession for many years
starting from the early 2000's That wasn't determined by the policies
of Bush or Engler; and I am not a fan them. This is not a gov'mnt
controlled economy, so gov'mnt can't be made the main target of
criticism's regarding the Great Recession and high unemployment. Thus,
the Occupy Wall Street protests at the correct location in protesting the
private enterprise symbolic center.
Wall Street is our dominant political institution
Sunday, July 27, 2014
...until money made with money is taxed higher than money made by one selling one’s labor.
on American Mid Term Politics For 2014 facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Hillary2016.smart.people/683776405050730/?notif_t=group_activity
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Hillary2016.smart.people/683776405050730/?notif_t=group_activity
"Not a thing will get better in the USA until money made with money is taxed higher than money made by one selling one’s labor.
Mitt Rmoney, and everyone like him paid at 13.8% in 2011 as they did in 2010, 2009 etc., and it continues that money made with money is consistently taxed at a far lower rate than money made by selling one’s labor.
Some people call for money made with money to be taxed equally as money made by working for a salary, but in truth, money made by selling one’s labor to another is far harder to earn than money made by phoning or emailing one’s broker or hedge fund manager, so.....
Money made with money should be taxed at a far Higher rate than money made by money.
I repeat, in the single year of 2011, Rmoney paid 13.8% federal tax on 30 MILLION DOLLARS INCOME.
A teacher or cop or fireman paid about 30% on 60K, if they made that much.
If that equation does not radically change, then all your politics and campaigns and “progressive” heros don’t amount to shit"
Mitt Rmoney, and everyone like him paid at 13.8% in 2011 as they did in 2010, 2009 etc., and it continues that money made with money is consistently taxed at a far lower rate than money made by selling one’s labor.
Some people call for money made with money to be taxed equally as money made by working for a salary, but in truth, money made by selling one’s labor to another is far harder to earn than money made by phoning or emailing one’s broker or hedge fund manager, so.....
Money made with money should be taxed at a far Higher rate than money made by money.
I repeat, in the single year of 2011, Rmoney paid 13.8% federal tax on 30 MILLION DOLLARS INCOME.
A teacher or cop or fireman paid about 30% on 60K, if they made that much.
If that equation does not radically change, then all your politics and campaigns and “progressive” heros don’t amount to shit"
Friday, July 25, 2014
Thursday, July 24, 2014
The program for the 113th AAA Annual Meeting is now available online: http://aaa.confex.com/aaa/2014
The program for the 113th AAA Annual Meeting is now available online: http://aaa.confex.com/aaa/2014/webprogram/start.html
#AAA2014
#AAA2014
- ////Karl Marx once, replying to Nolan Finley before he was bornBehind all the lies and cynicism, the message was clear: people do not have the right to water any more than they do to food, shelter, health care or any other vital necessity. In capitalist America, if you do not pay for something, even something as essential as water, you will have to do without it.
This brutal outlook of the American ruling class was made explicit by Nolan Finley, the right-wing columnist for the Detroit News, whose opinion piece Thursday was headlined: “There is no right to free water.”
Finley has long been a shameless mouthpiece for the corporate and financial interests that dominate Detroit. He has previously called for the destruction of the “entitlement mentality” in the city—that is, the view that workers should expect decent wages, pensions and health care. Two years ago, he declared that “democracy has failed” in Detroit and called for a “short-term dictator” (later arriving in the person of Kevyn Orr) to “create a sustainable operating model.”
Looking for a higher authority to justify the inhumane shutoff policy, Finley turns to the Old Testament in his more recent column, writing, “Ever since Adam and Eve got booted out of Eden, people have devoted most of their energy and labor to meeting the basic needs of food, water, clothing and shelter. It’s the origin of work—you’re hungry, you’re thirsty, you need some decent threads and a roof over your head, you have to get up in the morning and do something constructive.”
With unabashed arrogance and contempt for the population, Finley accuses residents of squandering money on cable television and cell phones. Once the shutoffs began, he asserts, many households paid up their bills, “suggesting that they could have been paying all along.” What existed in Detroit, he declared, “is not a humanitarian crisis” but a “forced reordering of priorities.”
There is little doubt many residents stopped paying for food, medicine and other daily necessities to get their water turned back on. Thousands of others, however, continue to live without water or are hauling buckets from their neighbor’s homes and fire hydrants or relying on bottled water from volunteers.
According to the corporate and financial elite and their political and media henchmen like Orr and Finley, workers have no social rights. Pensions, health care, public education, access to culture will be available only to those who can afford it. If the capitalists could privatize the air people breathe, it would not be a right either. 
- Charles Brown "Looking for a higher authority to justify the inhumane shutoff policy, Finley turns to the Old Testament in his more recent column, writing, “Ever since Adam and Eve got booted out of Eden, people have devoted most of their energy and labor to meeting the basic needs of food, water, clothing and shelter. It’s the origin of work—you’re hungry, you’re thirsty, you need some decent threads and a roof over your head, you have to get up in the morning and do something constructive." ///////Karl Marx once, replying to Nolan Finley before he was born: "This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assurance to repeat it with all the solemnity of a statesman to the French people, once so spirituel. But as soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and “labour” were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic.
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The relationship between systems of reproduction and modes of production is probably the least developed and understood aspect of historical materialism. The reason Marxism is a real social science and not a faux bourgeoisie social science is its starting point, the basic biological processes of production and reproduction. The two systems are complementary and produce/reproduce not only the surplus the ruling classes live off of, but also the working classes who produce the surplus. How the two systems intersect is what produces exploited and oppressed social classes. This is true of women who experience double exploitation, once as workers and again as subordinate members of hierarchal and patriarchal systems of reproduction. The author speculates on why the greater emphasizes on production over reproduction. But it is more imperative that Marxists work for systems of reproduction that advance women’s/worker’s liberation. The Manifesto proclaims Marxist intentions to radically change the world. But the focus is on radically transforming bourgeoisie politics and economics. Socialism will replace capitalism. A real worker’s democracy will replace bourgeoisie democracy. Then why not also proclaim the future of the family, marriage, inheritance and other institutions of reproduction to be gender equality? The bourgeoisie wants to hold as sacred monogamous patriarchy. They accuse communists of wanting to replace patriarchy and fantasize about what will replace it. Engels, from the research of the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, concludes the origins of the family begin with matriarchy not patriarchy (see E.E.W. Clay’s comments below.) So why are exploitive systems of patriarchy so sacred? Faux bourgeoisie social science has these kinds of built in class prejudices. 19th century bourgeoisie intellectuals, namely Malthus and Ricardo, had nothing but contempt for assumed working class reproductive and sexual behavior. Malthus rejected the poor laws, a living wage, and charity/welfare for the underclasses, and he insisted their numbers be held down with the ‘positive checks’ of war, disease, hunger because these classes lacked ‘moral restraints.’ Are these not the same whacky arguments of 21st century Right-Wing conservatives? Communists should proclaim a future of gender equality in both spheres of production and reproduction and forever end exploitive class divisions. NT