Feminism and Capitalism vs Patriarchy and Class

BY PEGGY POWELL DOBBINS Feminism and Capitalism vs Patriarchy and Class When males on the left denigrated women’s liberation as bourgeois feminism they weren’t wrong. Not insofar as women’s liberation was freedom from subservience to males, all of whom were citizens; or was it freedom from subservience to citizens, all of whom were male? Women’s liberation was bourgeois feminism insofar as it’s goal was full and equal citizenship with males, upheld and enforced by the state. Bourgeois feminists never did, nor do, demand otherwise. patriarchy <- patri- And which comes first? pater, patron, paternal, patronage, paternity, patronize,paternalize, patriot, patria, patrimony, Are similar institutions, practices and relations among people who do not speak languages that came from Rome but are written in Latin, truly similar, ie the same, to those of people who speak Romance languages? IE Are British, Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish patri- rights and duties the same as Italian, Romanian, French, Spanish and Portuguese? And what about all those peoples whose ancestors never spoke, never even tried to speak, never heard anyone speak as Julius Caesar spoke in Rome? or anyone else born and raised in Rome. That would include all the females and all the males descended from Julia. But the females, as the Greeks taught the Romans, were not citizens. Citizenship is for those who bear arms in defense of the state which grants them rights in exchange for doing their duty which is to risk their lives ‘perchance to die’ and why? So their sons can mature into men and take their place. So their daughters can mature into mothers and beget more sons. So citizens can be fruitful and multiply and people the earth. And if the parts of the earth to be peopled by citizens are already peopled by people who aren’t? What then? Perhaps they have their own state and citizens in their own words, who will bear their arms in defense their state, their status. Status, what’s its root meaning? Place, rank in the state? Or does the verb come first: to state? The state states. And there you have it, Mr.Wittgenstein, and would we be further along if Mr. Chomsky had stuck to grammar? Where kinship is primary it is uterine. Mothers of the ruling class do not need citizenship. Citizenship is invented to recruit some men who are not their sons but abide by their rule, sons in law, not sons of the womb. Why are sons in law extended rights? To perform the duties of sons, risk their lives. To free their womb sons from risking theirs. To defend them from the men from whom the sons-in-law are recruited. I don’t know if citizenship in Egypt, Sumer or even in Greece was extended to sons-in-law, to sons of mothers, born of mothers not of one’s kin, not of one’s kind, who do not speak one’s mother’s tongue. Feminism has been about obtaining citizenship, full and equal citizenship, rights and duties, rights granted and protected, duties imposed and expected by the state. Female citizenship is not called for and is not desired until the earth is peopled with more people than certainly the present, state can use. Protecting women to promote more reproduction is not called for. And about this time, humans have created defensive arms that can employed without risking the warrior’s life, female or male. Feminism is about females winning full and equal rights as citizens. I don’t have to say “citizens of the state” if I’ve succeeded in making the case that citizenship does not exist without the state, nor the state without citizenship. Those who are not citizens become full citizens, fully equal to those who are citizens by birth, by demonstrating their ability and willingness to accept the duty part of citizenship and thus coincidentally liberate most born citizens from the onus and honor of military duty. Women’s liberation may include liberation from war. Feminism may not. Feminism may include liberation from racism. We shall see. I do not believe it can include liberation from capitalism. But some feminists are giving a good try at socializing capital.