PHL323H1 Study Guide - Final Guide: Vanguardism, Eugenics, Lumpenproletariat
Benjamin on the Aftermath of a Revolution
Sorel - revolution = 'proletarian general strike'
•
Contrast with political general strike/coup
Where 'power is transferred from the privileged to the privileged' and
'the mass of producers will change their masters' - the structure of
society does not change
§
•
A proletarian general strike 'announces its indifference toward material gain
through conquest by declaring its intention to abolish the state' - everything
goes - rebuilding social structure from the ground up
Strikes are unjustly violent when they are exploitative or extortionate
§
Extortionate if they return to work when they get superficial
modifications to their demands
§
•
General political strike is violent - same 'rot' as police
•
Violent general proletarian strike need not have this 'rot' - can be justified
•
The strike must be anarchistic - the aftermath can't be planned out
You have to see what organically grows in its place
§
•
General proletarian strike can be good, general political strike cannot
•
Frye - Women are Oppressed as Women
All women are oppressed, all men are not
•
Double binds - every option has penalties and punishments
•
Birdcage metaphor - macroscopic view shows full system of oppression
•
Limitations do not equal oppression
Oppression means different things to different people
§
•
Przeworski on the use of alternative tactics
Can revolution be achieved by democratic means?
Ultimately, no
○
•
Socialist parties rebranded themselves as workers' parties
Wider appeal
○
•
But Proletarian majority never came to be
Prediction did not eventuate
○
•
By broadening to professional middle class, 80% of population is to be
captured
But again, this did not work
○
Lost almost half the vote in Belgium, UK, etc.
○
•
Now, they must offer proximate goals which
Are relevant to all classes, and
○
Can be achieved in one term
○
•
We can see that socialist parties are starting to play the exact same game as
more traditionalist parties
Almost bribing voters to get more votes
○
•
Socialism sees taking the means of production as private property as the
ultimate cause of poverty and inequality
Ultimate goal: socialise means of production
○
•
Socialisation = production by the people
Still has antagonism between producers and consumers which
socialism wants to avoid
○
•
Nationalisation = turning that means of production over to the people
Means putting means of production in the hands of government
bureaucrats
○
•
Again, they knew what they wanted, but not how to get it
So they formed investigative commissions and waited
○
The results didn't come at good times, didn't come, were wrong, etc.
○
•
Although they never won, there were instances in which they were invited
into coalitions
But then they were stuck between pursuing socialist goals and never
having power or ignoring them while keeping power
○
•
One compromise was to stay in government but pushing for small reforms
that will ultimately lead to socialism
This assumes the next govt. will not recall these reforms
○
However this did not alter the economic landscape, actually reinforcing
it
○
This was self-undermining
○
•
The socialist parties just started looking like average parties
They used to have a unique standpoint, trying to remove private
property and means of production
○
Once they gave up the ultimate goal, they lost one of the main things
that set them apart
○
The workers had less and less motivation to vote for them
○
•
Until the Keynesian revolution, where he believed:
Sometimes the government needs to interfere in the private sector,
otherwise it can become inefficient
○
People should not save more than they need
○
Governments should use deficits to stimulate employment during
recessions
Rather than engaging in austerity measures, you should take out
more government debt to generate employment and
infrastructure, jump-starting the economy
§
○
•
This justified government intervention
Starts to look like something of a compromise position
○
Something like socialism but within a capitalist system
○
•
Social democracy incapable of leading into socialism
Not compatible with economic expansion
○
•
BPP tactics
Newton
The BPP is a Lenin-style vanguard party that engages in both violent and
educational activities.
•
It should be comprised of activists, not intellectuals.•
It should be visible, not underground. •
Cleaver
Mass line = what party does
Patrolling, free breakfast, etc.
○
•
Party line = ultimate goals
Institute non racist socialist state
○
•
Wants the application of Marxism-Leninism to US + Black Urban Population
Adapted to BPP's circumstances
○
•
Black Urban Lumpenproletariat = not class conscious
Internal colonisation
○
•
Legitimate action isn't an option
Alternative tactics are therefore legitimate
○
•
Goal is to change the system as a whole
Labour unions cannot lead as they are integrated in the system
○
Like Fanon's colonised intellectuals
○
•
Delphy's reason for non-domestic labour performed in
the home is exploited
Patriarchal oppression is not the same thing as capitalistic oppression•
Patriarchy = unpaid furnishing of labour by women
Dworkin’s sexism includes, but is not limited to, economic servitude of
women to men. That is Delphy’s patriarchy.
○
•
Women are not paid for other forms of work too1)
No difference between goods produced by women and those by men2)
There is no work that women do inside the home that is not payed outside
the home.
3)
Women still do unpaid work when they enter the workforce4)
Patriarchal oppression =/= capitalistic oppression1)
Marriage is a form of slavery2)
(P1) Feminist nonviolence is the prevention of violence against women.
(P2) Patriarchy is a form of violence against women.
(P3) Patriarchy is part of the base of every known society. Therefore,
(C1) Disestablishing patriarchy is nonviolent.
Therefore,
(C2) Disestablishing part of the base of every known society – which requires a
revolution – is nonviolent.
Freeman - why groups need a formal structure
Doesn’t talk about society as a monolithic whole, but we will•
Many feminist groups in the 60s had structureless group organisation
To escape the over-structured outside world
○
•
She says structurelessness is damaging
The goals aren't as good as they get more specific
○
Precise tasks are best done by allocating them to the most able
○
This doesn’t happen if there's no structure
○
•
Formal vs. informal structure
Tasks and information accessible to all members vs.
○
Things are not publicly laid down in any way
○
•
Structureless groups are really informally structured
You can only not have a structure if you have no contact with each other, at
which point it's not a group at all
○
[At this point you can push back with the metaphysics of group membership]
○
•
Elites = small group of people who have power over a larger group, and often
without their knowledge or consent
They're just a group of friends tbh
○
•
If there is an explicit communications network, the elites have two channels of
communications
In unstructured groups, only friends can communicate with each other
○
Only between people with common interests and attitudes
○
•
If there is more than one informal network, they may compete for power, or, if
there is a formal communications network, they may or may not be an elite
Depends on membership and nature of formal structure
○
The only way to prevent the formation of an elite is through a formal
communications network
○
•
Elites are more likely to control the task selection process
They are likely to collude
○
You are likely to agree with your friends
○
Decisions are made behind closed doors
○
Formal communications networks are an antidote for this
○
•
Elites are more likely to occupy leadership positions
Even informally
○
•
You can be an elite if you share personalities and backgrounds with an elite and
devote time to the group
It takes time to make friends
○
•
Main issue: people are listened to because they are liked, not because they are
saying something worthwhile
Perpetuating power imbalances
○
•
If she is correct, post-revolution society needs some kind of formal structure•
Arendt - Russian revolution did not institute a genuinely
new form of govt.
There should be a revolution enacted, with the opportunity for the
establishment of a new government, every twenty years.
1)
The ‘Ward System’: the primary channel of people’s political engagement
should be at the level of their local community.
2)
Russia in 1905 and 1917
Lenin witnessed the revolutions and thought (like Marx) that ward
systems were at best transitory + didn’t think Russia would follow Paris
so closely
Played an active role in the demise of the Soviets (elected bodies)
§
Rebellion against Bolsheviks in Kronstadt - L crushed them
§
○
They were 'professional revolutionaries'
Someone who spends their time in study, thought, theory and
debate of revolutionary action
§
Almost always non-proletariat
§
They do not start revolutions, they just influence them after they
have already started
§
There is no political parties in the ward system - no socialist party
§
So Lenin would have been out of a job
§
○
•
Ehrenreich - Feminism and Marxism's similarities
Socialist feminism is something more than a conjunction of socialism and
feminism
•
Radical feminism = all oppression is gender oppression. Class oppression is
just male aggression
•
Mechanical Marxism = the only important features of capitalist society are
those relating to means of production or the conventional political sphere
•
Marxism and feminism both look at the world critically
Women's frustrations in the world lead us to socialism and feminism
○
Will one subsume the other?
○
•
Social sciences view the world as comprised of static balances and
symmetries
Dynamic antagonisms between opposing forces and groups
○
Terrifying and liberating realisation of how terrible the world is but we
know what we need to do about it
○
Intersection of theoretical and practical wisdom
○
•
Capitalist societies are characterised by systemic inequality
Marxists: this is inherent to capitalism
○
Profits are made by paying ppl less than their job is worth
○
•
State has a monopoly on violence
State are the only ones who can imprison, kill, etc. without
repercussions
○
This keeps capitalism in place
○
•
Marxism - state power needs to be seized by the working class•
Feminism addresses gender inequality
General explanation: men have a physical advantage over women
○
The reward for being good is protection from male violence
○
Threatens the protection from male violence
○
•
Capitalism's natural democracy and pluralism are myths•
Instinct and romantic love are also myths
Women are told they need to stay home for love
○
•
We want a society that doesn’t need myths•
Radical feminism says all oppression is a result of male aggressiveness
This is myopic
○
Leaves out details of men and women
○
•
Radical feminism rules out possibility of reconciliation between men and
women
Rules out humanitarian and egalitarian society
○
•
Socialist society displays far less violence towards women•
We must see how patriarchal oppression is altered by capitalism•
If we alter the means of production and the conventional political sphere, we
alter the peripheral parts of society
This does not work the other way
○
According to Mechanical Marxism
○
•
Socialist feminism: capitalism is a social and cultural totality; it is not confined
to select social spheres
Even unwaged housewives produce surplus value
○
•
Classes can be oppressed in non-economic ways•
We need to combine certain aspects of radical feminism and mechanical
Marxism
We need to acknowledge the particular impact of capitalism
○
•
Further directions for the socialist feminist synthesis •
Extension of the analysis of force as the foundation of both class and gender
oppression – but acknowledging that most people do not act under a direct
threat of violence.
1.
Figuring out what plays the role of force when it isn’t force. (Capitalist-
controlled mass culture?)
2.
The role that the subjugation of women plays in people’s implicit
acquiescence to capitalist social norms.
3.
Discern any fundamental interconnections between women’s struggle and
class struggle.
4.
Arendt - Propaganda and Advertising
Hitler and Stalin united people despite conflicting interests
Masses consented even despite their best interests
○
•
Propaganda aims to indoctrinate
Message needs to be consistent and repetitive
○
To comfort masses afraid of living in an incomprehensible world
○
•
Terror = threat of violence and/or death to uphold totalitarian predictions•
Propaganda and advertising leans on "scientific evidence" to possess
authority
•
Totalitarianism = propaganda + indoctrination + terror•
Leaders must make infallible claims
But they can make these claims infallible by forcing them to be true
eventually
○
Stalin saying that there was no unemployment by starving unemployed
people to death
○
•
Appiah - race
W.E.B Du Bois laid out foundations of Pan-Africanist movement
We scientifically have at least 2/3 races (white/black/yellow)
○
D.B. rejects this and considers 8 races
○
"Negros" must develop themselves as a race
○
Positive conception of race -"antiracist racism" -Negro people, as a
race, have a contribution to make to civilization and humanity, which
no other race can make.
○
Race as a sociohistorical concept
○
•
Appiah claims that Du Bois is not transcending the scientific conception of
race
Family of common history implies shared ancestry
○
Linear conceptions of family histories underrepresent the biological
range of our ancestry
○
We can't accurately track our history back to a specific race
○
Sharing a common group history cannot be a criterion for being
members of the same group, for we would have to be able to identify
the group in order to identify its history
○
History may have made us what we are, but the choice of a slice of
the past in a period before your birth as your own history is always
exactly that: a choice. The phrase the "invention of tradition" is a
pleonasm.
○
DB claims that common impulses are shared between biologically
defined races
○
He claims there are 8 racial groups, while science discerns 3, because
he superimposes geographical criterion
○
Admitted colour was a sign of racial essence, which accounted for the
intellectual and moral deficiency
○
•
Scientifically there is no connection between race and capacity
It is not legitimate to argue from differences in physical characteristics
to differences in mental characteristics…
○
The civilization of a … race at any particular moment of time offers no
index to its innate or inherited capacities
○
The conclusion: with the exception of those characteristics shared by all
human beings (such as being able to acquire language), knowledge of a
person’s ‘gross physical features’ (i.e. race) tells you basically nothing
about their biology
○
Every reputable biologist will agree that human genetic variability
between the populations of Africa or Europe or Asia is not much
greater than that within those populations…
○
Apart from visible morphological characteristics of skin, hair, and bone,
by which we are inclined to assign people to the broadest racial
categories…there are few genetic characteristics to be found in the
population of England that are not found in similar proportions in Zairs
or in China
○
Given only a person's race, it is hard to say what his or her biological
characteristics (apart from those that human beings share) will be,
except… features of "morphological differentiation"
○
0.5% difference in probability between people in the same race having
the same allele and people in different races having the same allele
○
Race is not a biological fact but a logical one, for Nei and
Roychoudhury's races are defined by their morphology in the first place
○
Race is a poor indicator of capacity
○
•
There is no doubt that all human beings descend from an original population
(probably, as it happens, in Africa), and that from there people radiated out
to cover the habitable globe
At the margins there is always the exchange of genes
○
All human populations are linked to each other through neighbouring
populations
○
The classification of people into "races" would be biologically
interesting if both margins and the migrations had not left behind a
genetic trail
○
•
In the early phases of theory, scientists begin, inevitably, with the categories
of their folk theories of the world, and often the criteria of membership of
these categories can be detected with the unaided senses
But as we go on, we look for "deeper", more theoretical properties
○
•
Du Bois does not escape the concept of race, despite disavowing it - "If he
escaped that racism, he never completed the escape from race
Du Bois said: "we ought to speak of civilizations where we now speak of
races… Indeed, even the physical characteristics, excluding the skin
color of people, are to no small extent the direct result of the physical
and social environment under which it is living"
○
Yet he remains committed to Pan-Africanism
○
He believes that his color and hair mark his heritage and tie him to the
history of Africa
○
But why does this matter?
○
Non-sequitur: If what DU Bois has in common with Africa is a history of
"discrimination and insult," then this binds him, on his own account, to
"yellow Asia and… the South Seas" also. How can something he shares
with the whole nonwhite world bind him to a part of it?
○
The 'discrimination and insult' he experienced was also different from
what was experienced by Kwame Nkrumah in colonized West Africa
○
What Du bois shares with the nonwhite world is not insult but the
badge of insult, and the badge, without the insult, is just the very skin
and hair and bone that it is impossible to connect with the scientific
definition of race
○
Du Bois writes as if he has to choose between Africa, on the one hand,
and "yellow Asia and…the South seas," on the other. But that, it seems
to me, is just the choice that racism imposes on us--and just the choice
we must reject.
○
•
Du Bois is an intrinsic racist, while his theoretical racism was extrinsic•
"The truth is that there are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do
all we ask race to do for us."
"though he saw the dawn coming, he never faced the sun."
○
We all live in the dusk of that dawn
○
•
Civilisations are socially constructed - if we didn't have society, we wouldn’t
have civilisation
But that does not mean it is not real
○
•
Dworkin -redefining nonviolence
Women are more oppressed than minority racial groups
Not just by the professional world, but by their own fathers, husbands,
brothers, etc.
○
Racially oppressed people can at least retreat to their own community
and family
○
Women are blood-related to their oppressors whereas this is usually
not the case with racial minorities
○
•
To not actively prevent violence is to be complicit/encourage violence
Allies are willing to lay down their lives to combat sexism
○
•
To be truly nonviolenct requires traditionally (patriarchally) "violent" actions
Violent acts committed in self-defence reduce violence overall
○
•
We need to know the kinds and degrees of violence in order to know how to
prevent them
•
Davis - Eugenics + prison industrial complex
Joseph - why white women have power over black men
Lorde - poetry and economic position
Poetry is a resource that doesn’t use quite as much energy in expressing oppression•
How can we be equal if we're different?•
It's not the differences, it's the refusal to recognise differences
Must be seen as a source of strength rather than division•
Distinction between poetry and prose:
Prose = serious and rigorous, but requires more financial security ('room of one's
own' -Woolf)
You need a room, a word processor, time, etc.
Poetry is the most economical art form
Woolf - women are not in the right situation to write literature
They don’t have a room where they can sit and write for long periods of time
Their time is taken up with domestic labour and stuff
Lower class women more likely to represent their situation with poetry
Sculpting, painting, photography, etc. - needs materials
High art/Low art distinction
Used to be a distinction until the enlightenment
Rise of classical music orchestra
Only accessible to upper classes
Ageism - young women not inclined to listen to what old women listen to
So we can't ignore the differences of race between men and women
White women ignore the differences with women of colour:
They have to acknowledge their own advantages
Undermines unity of women
We need to acknowledge difference and realise that there are similarities
White women and WoC are not oppressed in the same way
But the end result is the same
The idea that there is only one dimension of human difference - that of men and
women - is a tool of social control
Equality is recognition of and respect for non-identity
Our diversity will be our strength
Oppressive structures are embedded in us and we need to work hard to change
them
E.g. high art, low art distinction
Exam Revision
Saturday, April 8, 2017
8:39 PM
Benjamin on the Aftermath of a Revolution
Sorel - revolution = 'proletarian general strike'•
Contrast with political general strike/coup
Where 'power is transferred from the privileged to the privileged' and
'the mass of producers will change their masters' - the structure of
society does not change
§
•
A proletarian general strike 'announces its indifference toward material gain
through conquest by declaring its intention to abolish the state' - everything
goes - rebuilding social structure from the ground up
Strikes are unjustly violent when they are exploitative or extortionate
§
Extortionate if they return to work when they get superficial
modifications to their demands
§
•
General political strike is violent - same 'rot' as police•
Violent general proletarian strike need not have this 'rot' - can be justified•
The strike must be anarchistic - the aftermath can't be planned out
You have to see what organically grows in its place
§
•
General proletarian strike can be good, general political strike cannot•
Frye - Women are Oppressed as Women
All women are oppressed, all men are not•
Double binds - every option has penalties and punishments•
Birdcage metaphor - macroscopic view shows full system of oppression•
Limitations do not equal oppression
Oppression means different things to different people
§
•
Przeworski on the use of alternative tactics
Can revolution be achieved by democratic means?
Ultimately, no
○
•
Socialist parties rebranded themselves as workers' parties
Wider appeal
○
•
But Proletarian majority never came to be
Prediction did not eventuate
○
•
By broadening to professional middle class, 80% of population is to be
captured
But again, this did not work
○
Lost almost half the vote in Belgium, UK, etc.
○
•
Now, they must offer proximate goals which
Are relevant to all classes, and
○
Can be achieved in one term
○
•
We can see that socialist parties are starting to play the exact same game as
more traditionalist parties
Almost bribing voters to get more votes
○
•
Socialism sees taking the means of production as private property as the
ultimate cause of poverty and inequality
Ultimate goal: socialise means of production
○
•
Socialisation = production by the people
Still has antagonism between producers and consumers which
socialism wants to avoid
○
•
Nationalisation = turning that means of production over to the people
Means putting means of production in the hands of government
bureaucrats
○
•
Again, they knew what they wanted, but not how to get it
So they formed investigative commissions and waited
○
The results didn't come at good times, didn't come, were wrong, etc.
○
•
Although they never won, there were instances in which they were invited
into coalitions
But then they were stuck between pursuing socialist goals and never
having power or ignoring them while keeping power
○
•
One compromise was to stay in government but pushing for small reforms
that will ultimately lead to socialism
This assumes the next govt. will not recall these reforms
○
However this did not alter the economic landscape, actually reinforcing
it
○
This was self-undermining
○
•
The socialist parties just started looking like average parties
They used to have a unique standpoint, trying to remove private
property and means of production
○
Once they gave up the ultimate goal, they lost one of the main things
that set them apart
○
The workers had less and less motivation to vote for them
○
•
Until the Keynesian revolution, where he believed:
Sometimes the government needs to interfere in the private sector,
otherwise it can become inefficient
○
People should not save more than they need
○
Governments should use deficits to stimulate employment during
recessions
Rather than engaging in austerity measures, you should take out
more government debt to generate employment and
infrastructure, jump-starting the economy
§
○
•
This justified government intervention
Starts to look like something of a compromise position
○
Something like socialism but within a capitalist system
○
•
Social democracy incapable of leading into socialism
Not compatible with economic expansion
○
•
BPP tactics
Newton
The BPP is a Lenin-style vanguard party that engages in both violent and
educational activities.
•
It should be comprised of activists, not intellectuals.•
It should be visible, not underground. •
Cleaver
Mass line = what party does
Patrolling, free breakfast, etc.
○
•
Party line = ultimate goals
Institute non racist socialist state
○
•
Wants the application of Marxism-Leninism to US + Black Urban Population
Adapted to BPP's circumstances
○
•
Black Urban Lumpenproletariat = not class conscious
Internal colonisation
○
•
Legitimate action isn't an option
Alternative tactics are therefore legitimate
○
•
Goal is to change the system as a whole
Labour unions cannot lead as they are integrated in the system
○
Like Fanon's colonised intellectuals
○
•
Delphy's reason for non-domestic labour performed in
the home is exploited
Patriarchal oppression is not the same thing as capitalistic oppression•
Patriarchy = unpaid furnishing of labour by women
Dworkin’s sexism includes, but is not limited to, economic servitude of
women to men. That is Delphy’s patriarchy.
○
•
Women are not paid for other forms of work too1)
No difference between goods produced by women and those by men2)
There is no work that women do inside the home that is not payed outside
the home.
3)
Women still do unpaid work when they enter the workforce4)
Patriarchal oppression =/= capitalistic oppression1)
Marriage is a form of slavery2)
(P1) Feminist nonviolence is the prevention of violence against women.
(P2) Patriarchy is a form of violence against women.
(P3) Patriarchy is part of the base of every known society. Therefore,
(C1) Disestablishing patriarchy is nonviolent.
Therefore,
(C2) Disestablishing part of the base of every known society – which requires a
revolution – is nonviolent.
Freeman - why groups need a formal structure
Doesn’t talk about society as a monolithic whole, but we will•
Many feminist groups in the 60s had structureless group organisation
To escape the over-structured outside world
○
•
She says structurelessness is damaging
The goals aren't as good as they get more specific
○
Precise tasks are best done by allocating them to the most able
○
This doesn’t happen if there's no structure
○
•
Formal vs. informal structure
Tasks and information accessible to all members vs.
○
Things are not publicly laid down in any way
○
•
Structureless groups are really informally structured
You can only not have a structure if you have no contact with each other, at
which point it's not a group at all
○
[At this point you can push back with the metaphysics of group membership]
○
•
Elites = small group of people who have power over a larger group, and often
without their knowledge or consent
They're just a group of friends tbh
○
•
If there is an explicit communications network, the elites have two channels of
communications
In unstructured groups, only friends can communicate with each other
○
Only between people with common interests and attitudes
○
•
If there is more than one informal network, they may compete for power, or, if
there is a formal communications network, they may or may not be an elite
Depends on membership and nature of formal structure
○
The only way to prevent the formation of an elite is through a formal
communications network
○
•
Elites are more likely to control the task selection process
They are likely to collude
○
You are likely to agree with your friends
○
Decisions are made behind closed doors
○
Formal communications networks are an antidote for this
○
•
Elites are more likely to occupy leadership positions
Even informally
○
•
You can be an elite if you share personalities and backgrounds with an elite and
devote time to the group
It takes time to make friends
○
•
Main issue: people are listened to because they are liked, not because they are
saying something worthwhile
Perpetuating power imbalances
○
•
If she is correct, post-revolution society needs some kind of formal structure•
Arendt - Russian revolution did not institute a genuinely
new form of govt.
There should be a revolution enacted, with the opportunity for the
establishment of a new government, every twenty years.
1)
The ‘Ward System’: the primary channel of people’s political engagement
should be at the level of their local community.
2)
Russia in 1905 and 1917
Lenin witnessed the revolutions and thought (like Marx) that ward
systems were at best transitory + didn’t think Russia would follow Paris
so closely
Played an active role in the demise of the Soviets (elected bodies)
§
Rebellion against Bolsheviks in Kronstadt - L crushed them
§
○
They were 'professional revolutionaries'
Someone who spends their time in study, thought, theory and
debate of revolutionary action
§
Almost always non-proletariat
§
They do not start revolutions, they just influence them after they
have already started
§
There is no political parties in the ward system - no socialist party
§
So Lenin would have been out of a job
§
○
•
Ehrenreich - Feminism and Marxism's similarities
Socialist feminism is something more than a conjunction of socialism and
feminism
•
Radical feminism = all oppression is gender oppression. Class oppression is
just male aggression
•
Mechanical Marxism = the only important features of capitalist society are
those relating to means of production or the conventional political sphere
•
Marxism and feminism both look at the world critically
Women's frustrations in the world lead us to socialism and feminism
○
Will one subsume the other?
○
•
Social sciences view the world as comprised of static balances and
symmetries
Dynamic antagonisms between opposing forces and groups
○
Terrifying and liberating realisation of how terrible the world is but we
know what we need to do about it
○
Intersection of theoretical and practical wisdom
○
•
Capitalist societies are characterised by systemic inequality
Marxists: this is inherent to capitalism
○
Profits are made by paying ppl less than their job is worth
○
•
State has a monopoly on violence
State are the only ones who can imprison, kill, etc. without
repercussions
○
This keeps capitalism in place
○
•
Marxism - state power needs to be seized by the working class•
Feminism addresses gender inequality
General explanation: men have a physical advantage over women
○
The reward for being good is protection from male violence
○
Threatens the protection from male violence
○
•
Capitalism's natural democracy and pluralism are myths•
Instinct and romantic love are also myths
Women are told they need to stay home for love
○
•
We want a society that doesn’t need myths•
Radical feminism says all oppression is a result of male aggressiveness
This is myopic
○
Leaves out details of men and women
○
•
Radical feminism rules out possibility of reconciliation between men and
women
Rules out humanitarian and egalitarian society
○
•
Socialist society displays far less violence towards women•
We must see how patriarchal oppression is altered by capitalism•
If we alter the means of production and the conventional political sphere, we
alter the peripheral parts of society
This does not work the other way
○
According to Mechanical Marxism
○
•
Socialist feminism: capitalism is a social and cultural totality; it is not confined
to select social spheres
Even unwaged housewives produce surplus value
○
•
Classes can be oppressed in non-economic ways•
We need to combine certain aspects of radical feminism and mechanical
Marxism
We need to acknowledge the particular impact of capitalism
○
•
Further directions for the socialist feminist synthesis •
Extension of the analysis of force as the foundation of both class and gender
oppression – but acknowledging that most people do not act under a direct
threat of violence.
1.
Figuring out what plays the role of force when it isn’t force. (Capitalist-
controlled mass culture?)
2.
The role that the subjugation of women plays in people’s implicit
acquiescence to capitalist social norms.
3.
Discern any fundamental interconnections between women’s struggle and
class struggle.
4.
Arendt - Propaganda and Advertising
Hitler and Stalin united people despite conflicting interests
Masses consented even despite their best interests
○
•
Propaganda aims to indoctrinate
Message needs to be consistent and repetitive
○
To comfort masses afraid of living in an incomprehensible world
○
•
Terror = threat of violence and/or death to uphold totalitarian predictions•
Propaganda and advertising leans on "scientific evidence" to possess
authority
•
Totalitarianism = propaganda + indoctrination + terror•
Leaders must make infallible claims
But they can make these claims infallible by forcing them to be true
eventually
○
Stalin saying that there was no unemployment by starving unemployed
people to death
○
•
Appiah - race
W.E.B Du Bois laid out foundations of Pan-Africanist movement
We scientifically have at least 2/3 races (white/black/yellow)
○
D.B. rejects this and considers 8 races
○
"Negros" must develop themselves as a race
○
Positive conception of race -"antiracist racism" -Negro people, as a
race, have a contribution to make to civilization and humanity, which
no other race can make.
○
Race as a sociohistorical concept
○
•
Appiah claims that Du Bois is not transcending the scientific conception of
race
Family of common history implies shared ancestry
○
Linear conceptions of family histories underrepresent the biological
range of our ancestry
○
We can't accurately track our history back to a specific race
○
Sharing a common group history cannot be a criterion for being
members of the same group, for we would have to be able to identify
the group in order to identify its history
○
History may have made us what we are, but the choice of a slice of
the past in a period before your birth as your own history is always
exactly that: a choice. The phrase the "invention of tradition" is a
pleonasm.
○
DB claims that common impulses are shared between biologically
defined races
○
He claims there are 8 racial groups, while science discerns 3, because
he superimposes geographical criterion
○
Admitted colour was a sign of racial essence, which accounted for the
intellectual and moral deficiency
○
•
Scientifically there is no connection between race and capacity
It is not legitimate to argue from differences in physical characteristics
to differences in mental characteristics…
○
The civilization of a … race at any particular moment of time offers no
index to its innate or inherited capacities
○
The conclusion: with the exception of those characteristics shared by all
human beings (such as being able to acquire language), knowledge of a
person’s ‘gross physical features’ (i.e. race) tells you basically nothing
about their biology
○
Every reputable biologist will agree that human genetic variability
between the populations of Africa or Europe or Asia is not much
greater than that within those populations…
○
Apart from visible morphological characteristics of skin, hair, and bone,
by which we are inclined to assign people to the broadest racial
categories…there are few genetic characteristics to be found in the
population of England that are not found in similar proportions in Zairs
or in China
○
Given only a person's race, it is hard to say what his or her biological
characteristics (apart from those that human beings share) will be,
except… features of "morphological differentiation"
○
0.5% difference in probability between people in the same race having
the same allele and people in different races having the same allele
○
Race is not a biological fact but a logical one, for Nei and
Roychoudhury's races are defined by their morphology in the first place
○
Race is a poor indicator of capacity
○
•
There is no doubt that all human beings descend from an original population
(probably, as it happens, in Africa), and that from there people radiated out
to cover the habitable globe
At the margins there is always the exchange of genes
○
All human populations are linked to each other through neighbouring
populations
○
The classification of people into "races" would be biologically
interesting if both margins and the migrations had not left behind a
genetic trail
○
•
In the early phases of theory, scientists begin, inevitably, with the categories
of their folk theories of the world, and often the criteria of membership of
these categories can be detected with the unaided senses
But as we go on, we look for "deeper", more theoretical properties
○
•
Du Bois does not escape the concept of race, despite disavowing it - "If he
escaped that racism, he never completed the escape from race
Du Bois said: "we ought to speak of civilizations where we now speak of
races… Indeed, even the physical characteristics, excluding the skin
color of people, are to no small extent the direct result of the physical
and social environment under which it is living"
○
Yet he remains committed to Pan-Africanism
○
He believes that his color and hair mark his heritage and tie him to the
history of Africa
○
But why does this matter?
○
Non-sequitur: If what DU Bois has in common with Africa is a history of
"discrimination and insult," then this binds him, on his own account, to
"yellow Asia and… the South Seas" also. How can something he shares
with the whole nonwhite world bind him to a part of it?
○
The 'discrimination and insult' he experienced was also different from
what was experienced by Kwame Nkrumah in colonized West Africa
○
What Du bois shares with the nonwhite world is not insult but the
badge of insult, and the badge, without the insult, is just the very skin
and hair and bone that it is impossible to connect with the scientific
definition of race
○
Du Bois writes as if he has to choose between Africa, on the one hand,
and "yellow Asia and…the South seas," on the other. But that, it seems
to me, is just the choice that racism imposes on us--and just the choice
we must reject.
○
•
Du Bois is an intrinsic racist, while his theoretical racism was extrinsic•
"The truth is that there are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do
all we ask race to do for us."
"though he saw the dawn coming, he never faced the sun."
○
We all live in the dusk of that dawn
○
•
Civilisations are socially constructed - if we didn't have society, we wouldn’t
have civilisation
But that does not mean it is not real
○
•
Dworkin -redefining nonviolence
Women are more oppressed than minority racial groups
Not just by the professional world, but by their own fathers, husbands,
brothers, etc.
○
Racially oppressed people can at least retreat to their own community
and family
○
Women are blood-related to their oppressors whereas this is usually
not the case with racial minorities
○
•
To not actively prevent violence is to be complicit/encourage violence
Allies are willing to lay down their lives to combat sexism
○
•
To be truly nonviolenct requires traditionally (patriarchally) "violent" actions
Violent acts committed in self-defence reduce violence overall
○
•
We need to know the kinds and degrees of violence in order to know how to
prevent them
•
Davis - Eugenics + prison industrial complex
Joseph - why white women have power over black men
Lorde - poetry and economic position
Poetry is a resource that doesn’t use quite as much energy in expressing oppression•
How can we be equal if we're different?•
It's not the differences, it's the refusal to recognise differences
Must be seen as a source of strength rather than division•
Distinction between poetry and prose:
Prose = serious and rigorous, but requires more financial security ('room of one's
own' -Woolf)
You need a room, a word processor, time, etc.
Poetry is the most economical art form
Woolf - women are not in the right situation to write literature
They don’t have a room where they can sit and write for long periods of time
Their time is taken up with domestic labour and stuff
Lower class women more likely to represent their situation with poetry
Sculpting, painting, photography, etc. - needs materials
High art/Low art distinction
Used to be a distinction until the enlightenment
Rise of classical music orchestra
Only accessible to upper classes
Ageism - young women not inclined to listen to what old women listen to
So we can't ignore the differences of race between men and women
White women ignore the differences with women of colour:
They have to acknowledge their own advantages
Undermines unity of women
We need to acknowledge difference and realise that there are similarities
White women and WoC are not oppressed in the same way
But the end result is the same
The idea that there is only one dimension of human difference - that of men and
women - is a tool of social control
Equality is recognition of and respect for non-identity
Our diversity will be our strength
Oppressive structures are embedded in us and we need to work hard to change
them
E.g. high art, low art distinction
Exam Revision
Saturday, April 8, 2017 8:39 PM
Benjamin on the Aftermath of a Revolution
Sorel - revolution = 'proletarian general strike'•
Contrast with political general strike/coup
Where 'power is transferred from the privileged to the privileged' and
'the mass of producers will change their masters' - the structure of
society does not change
§
•
A proletarian general strike 'announces its indifference toward material gain
through conquest by declaring its intention to abolish the state' - everything
goes - rebuilding social structure from the ground up
Strikes are unjustly violent when they are exploitative or extortionate
§
Extortionate if they return to work when they get superficial
modifications to their demands
§
•
General political strike is violent - same 'rot' as police•
Violent general proletarian strike need not have this 'rot' - can be justified•
The strike must be anarchistic - the aftermath can't be planned out
You have to see what organically grows in its place
§
•
General proletarian strike can be good, general political strike cannot•
Frye - Women are Oppressed as Women
All women are oppressed, all men are not•
Double binds - every option has penalties and punishments•
Birdcage metaphor - macroscopic view shows full system of oppression•
Limitations do not equal oppression
Oppression means different things to different people
§
•
Przeworski on the use of alternative tactics
Can revolution be achieved by democratic means?
Ultimately, no
○
•
Socialist parties rebranded themselves as workers' parties
Wider appeal
○
•
But Proletarian majority never came to be
Prediction did not eventuate
○
•
By broadening to professional middle class, 80% of population is to be
captured
But again, this did not work
○
Lost almost half the vote in Belgium, UK, etc.
○
•
Now, they must offer proximate goals which
Are relevant to all classes, and
○
Can be achieved in one term
○
•
We can see that socialist parties are starting to play the exact same game as
more traditionalist parties
Almost bribing voters to get more votes
○
•
Socialism sees taking the means of production as private property as the
ultimate cause of poverty and inequality
Ultimate goal: socialise means of production
○
•
Socialisation = production by the people
Still has antagonism between producers and consumers which
socialism wants to avoid
○
•
Nationalisation = turning that means of production over to the people
Means putting means of production in the hands of government
bureaucrats
○
•
Again, they knew what they wanted, but not how to get it
So they formed investigative commissions and waited
○
The results didn't come at good times, didn't come, were wrong, etc.
○
•
Although they never won, there were instances in which they were invited
into coalitions
But then they were stuck between pursuing socialist goals and never
having power or ignoring them while keeping power
○
•
One compromise was to stay in government but pushing for small reforms
that will ultimately lead to socialism
This assumes the next govt. will not recall these reforms
○
However this did not alter the economic landscape, actually reinforcing
it
○
This was self-undermining
○
•
The socialist parties just started looking like average parties
They used to have a unique standpoint, trying to remove private
property and means of production
○
Once they gave up the ultimate goal, they lost one of the main things
that set them apart
○
The workers had less and less motivation to vote for them
○
•
Until the Keynesian revolution, where he believed:
Sometimes the government needs to interfere in the private sector,
otherwise it can become inefficient
○
People should not save more than they need
○
Governments should use deficits to stimulate employment during
recessions
Rather than engaging in austerity measures, you should take out
more government debt to generate employment and
infrastructure, jump-starting the economy
§
○
•
This justified government intervention
Starts to look like something of a compromise position
○
Something like socialism but within a capitalist system
○
•
Social democracy incapable of leading into socialism
Not compatible with economic expansion
○
•
BPP tactics
Newton
The BPP is a Lenin-style vanguard party that engages in both violent and
educational activities.
•
It should be comprised of activists, not intellectuals.
•
It should be visible, not underground.
•
Cleaver
Mass line = what party does
Patrolling, free breakfast, etc.
○
•
Party line = ultimate goals
Institute non racist socialist state
○
•
Wants the application of Marxism-Leninism to US + Black Urban Population
Adapted to BPP's circumstances
○
•
Black Urban Lumpenproletariat = not class conscious
Internal colonisation
○
•
Legitimate action isn't an option
Alternative tactics are therefore legitimate
○
•
Goal is to change the system as a whole
Labour unions cannot lead as they are integrated in the system
○
Like Fanon's colonised intellectuals
○
•
Delphy's reason for non-domestic labour performed in
the home is exploited
Patriarchal oppression is not the same thing as capitalistic oppression
•
Patriarchy = unpaid furnishing of labour by women
Dworkin’s sexism includes, but is not limited to, economic servitude of
women to men. That is Delphy’s patriarchy.
○
•
Women are not paid for other forms of work too
1)
No difference between goods produced by women and those by men
2)
There is no work that women do inside the home that is not payed outside
the home.
3)
Women still do unpaid work when they enter the workforce4)
Patriarchal oppression =/= capitalistic oppression1)
Marriage is a form of slavery2)
(P1) Feminist nonviolence is the prevention of violence against women.
(P2) Patriarchy is a form of violence against women.
(P3) Patriarchy is part of the base of every known society. Therefore,
(C1) Disestablishing patriarchy is nonviolent.
Therefore,
(C2) Disestablishing part of the base of every known society – which requires a
revolution – is nonviolent.
Freeman - why groups need a formal structure
Doesn’t talk about society as a monolithic whole, but we will•
Many feminist groups in the 60s had structureless group organisation
To escape the over-structured outside world
○
•
She says structurelessness is damaging
The goals aren't as good as they get more specific
○
Precise tasks are best done by allocating them to the most able
○
This doesn’t happen if there's no structure
○
•
Formal vs. informal structure
Tasks and information accessible to all members vs.
○
Things are not publicly laid down in any way
○
•
Structureless groups are really informally structured
You can only not have a structure if you have no contact with each other, at
which point it's not a group at all
○
[At this point you can push back with the metaphysics of group membership]
○
•
Elites = small group of people who have power over a larger group, and often
without their knowledge or consent
They're just a group of friends tbh
○
•
If there is an explicit communications network, the elites have two channels of
communications
In unstructured groups, only friends can communicate with each other
○
Only between people with common interests and attitudes
○
•
If there is more than one informal network, they may compete for power, or, if
there is a formal communications network, they may or may not be an elite
Depends on membership and nature of formal structure
○
The only way to prevent the formation of an elite is through a formal
communications network
○
•
Elites are more likely to control the task selection process
They are likely to collude
○
You are likely to agree with your friends
○
Decisions are made behind closed doors
○
Formal communications networks are an antidote for this
○
•
Elites are more likely to occupy leadership positions
Even informally
○
•
You can be an elite if you share personalities and backgrounds with an elite and
devote time to the group
It takes time to make friends
○
•
Main issue: people are listened to because they are liked, not because they are
saying something worthwhile
Perpetuating power imbalances
○
•
If she is correct, post-revolution society needs some kind of formal structure•
Arendt - Russian revolution did not institute a genuinely
new form of govt.
There should be a revolution enacted, with the opportunity for the
establishment of a new government, every twenty years.
1)
The ‘Ward System’: the primary channel of people’s political engagement
should be at the level of their local community.
2)
Russia in 1905 and 1917
Lenin witnessed the revolutions and thought (like Marx) that ward
systems were at best transitory + didn’t think Russia would follow Paris
so closely
Played an active role in the demise of the Soviets (elected bodies)
§
Rebellion against Bolsheviks in Kronstadt - L crushed them
§
○
They were 'professional revolutionaries'
Someone who spends their time in study, thought, theory and
debate of revolutionary action
§
Almost always non-proletariat
§
They do not start revolutions, they just influence them after they
have already started
§
There is no political parties in the ward system - no socialist party
§
So Lenin would have been out of a job
§
○
•
Ehrenreich - Feminism and Marxism's similarities
Socialist feminism is something more than a conjunction of socialism and
feminism
•
Radical feminism = all oppression is gender oppression. Class oppression is
just male aggression
•
Mechanical Marxism = the only important features of capitalist society are
those relating to means of production or the conventional political sphere
•
Marxism and feminism both look at the world critically
Women's frustrations in the world lead us to socialism and feminism
○
Will one subsume the other?
○
•
Social sciences view the world as comprised of static balances and
symmetries
Dynamic antagonisms between opposing forces and groups
○
Terrifying and liberating realisation of how terrible the world is but we
know what we need to do about it
○
Intersection of theoretical and practical wisdom
○
•
Capitalist societies are characterised by systemic inequality
Marxists: this is inherent to capitalism
○
Profits are made by paying ppl less than their job is worth
○
•
State has a monopoly on violence
State are the only ones who can imprison, kill, etc. without
repercussions
○
This keeps capitalism in place
○
•
Marxism - state power needs to be seized by the working class•
Feminism addresses gender inequality
General explanation: men have a physical advantage over women
○
The reward for being good is protection from male violence
○
Threatens the protection from male violence
○
•
Capitalism's natural democracy and pluralism are myths•
Instinct and romantic love are also myths
Women are told they need to stay home for love
○
•
We want a society that doesn’t need myths•
Radical feminism says all oppression is a result of male aggressiveness
This is myopic
○
Leaves out details of men and women
○
•
Radical feminism rules out possibility of reconciliation between men and
women
Rules out humanitarian and egalitarian society
○
•
Socialist society displays far less violence towards women•
We must see how patriarchal oppression is altered by capitalism•
If we alter the means of production and the conventional political sphere, we
alter the peripheral parts of society
This does not work the other way
○
According to Mechanical Marxism
○
•
Socialist feminism: capitalism is a social and cultural totality; it is not confined
to select social spheres
Even unwaged housewives produce surplus value
○
•
Classes can be oppressed in non-economic ways•
We need to combine certain aspects of radical feminism and mechanical
Marxism
We need to acknowledge the particular impact of capitalism
○
•
Further directions for the socialist feminist synthesis •
Extension of the analysis of force as the foundation of both class and gender
oppression – but acknowledging that most people do not act under a direct
threat of violence.
1.
Figuring out what plays the role of force when it isn’t force. (Capitalist-
controlled mass culture?)
2.
The role that the subjugation of women plays in people’s implicit
acquiescence to capitalist social norms.
3.
Discern any fundamental interconnections between women’s struggle and
class struggle.
4.
Arendt - Propaganda and Advertising
Hitler and Stalin united people despite conflicting interests
Masses consented even despite their best interests
○
•
Propaganda aims to indoctrinate
Message needs to be consistent and repetitive
○
To comfort masses afraid of living in an incomprehensible world
○
•
Terror = threat of violence and/or death to uphold totalitarian predictions•
Propaganda and advertising leans on "scientific evidence" to possess
authority
•
Totalitarianism = propaganda + indoctrination + terror•
Leaders must make infallible claims
But they can make these claims infallible by forcing them to be true
eventually
○
Stalin saying that there was no unemployment by starving unemployed
people to death
○
•
Appiah - race
W.E.B Du Bois laid out foundations of Pan-Africanist movement
We scientifically have at least 2/3 races (white/black/yellow)
○
D.B. rejects this and considers 8 races
○
"Negros" must develop themselves as a race
○
Positive conception of race -"antiracist racism" -Negro people, as a
race, have a contribution to make to civilization and humanity, which
no other race can make.
○
Race as a sociohistorical concept
○
•
Appiah claims that Du Bois is not transcending the scientific conception of
race
Family of common history implies shared ancestry
○
Linear conceptions of family histories underrepresent the biological
range of our ancestry
○
We can't accurately track our history back to a specific race
○
Sharing a common group history cannot be a criterion for being
members of the same group, for we would have to be able to identify
the group in order to identify its history
○
History may have made us what we are, but the choice of a slice of
the past in a period before your birth as your own history is always
exactly that: a choice. The phrase the "invention of tradition" is a
pleonasm.
○
DB claims that common impulses are shared between biologically
defined races
○
He claims there are 8 racial groups, while science discerns 3, because
he superimposes geographical criterion
○
Admitted colour was a sign of racial essence, which accounted for the
intellectual and moral deficiency
○
•
Scientifically there is no connection between race and capacity
It is not legitimate to argue from differences in physical characteristics
to differences in mental characteristics…
○
The civilization of a … race at any particular moment of time offers no
index to its innate or inherited capacities
○
The conclusion: with the exception of those characteristics shared by all
human beings (such as being able to acquire language), knowledge of a
person’s ‘gross physical features’ (i.e. race) tells you basically nothing
about their biology
○
Every reputable biologist will agree that human genetic variability
between the populations of Africa or Europe or Asia is not much
greater than that within those populations…
○
Apart from visible morphological characteristics of skin, hair, and bone,
by which we are inclined to assign people to the broadest racial
categories…there are few genetic characteristics to be found in the
population of England that are not found in similar proportions in Zairs
or in China
○
Given only a person's race, it is hard to say what his or her biological
characteristics (apart from those that human beings share) will be,
except… features of "morphological differentiation"
○
0.5% difference in probability between people in the same race having
the same allele and people in different races having the same allele
○
Race is not a biological fact but a logical one, for Nei and
Roychoudhury's races are defined by their morphology in the first place
○
Race is a poor indicator of capacity
○
•
There is no doubt that all human beings descend from an original population
(probably, as it happens, in Africa), and that from there people radiated out
to cover the habitable globe
At the margins there is always the exchange of genes
○
All human populations are linked to each other through neighbouring
populations
○
The classification of people into "races" would be biologically
interesting if both margins and the migrations had not left behind a
genetic trail
○
•
In the early phases of theory, scientists begin, inevitably, with the categories
of their folk theories of the world, and often the criteria of membership of
these categories can be detected with the unaided senses
But as we go on, we look for "deeper", more theoretical properties
○
•
Du Bois does not escape the concept of race, despite disavowing it - "If he
escaped that racism, he never completed the escape from race
Du Bois said: "we ought to speak of civilizations where we now speak of
races… Indeed, even the physical characteristics, excluding the skin
color of people, are to no small extent the direct result of the physical
and social environment under which it is living"
○
Yet he remains committed to Pan-Africanism
○
He believes that his color and hair mark his heritage and tie him to the
history of Africa
○
But why does this matter?
○
Non-sequitur: If what DU Bois has in common with Africa is a history of
"discrimination and insult," then this binds him, on his own account, to
"yellow Asia and… the South Seas" also. How can something he shares
with the whole nonwhite world bind him to a part of it?
○
The 'discrimination and insult' he experienced was also different from
what was experienced by Kwame Nkrumah in colonized West Africa
○
What Du bois shares with the nonwhite world is not insult but the
badge of insult, and the badge, without the insult, is just the very skin
and hair and bone that it is impossible to connect with the scientific
definition of race
○
Du Bois writes as if he has to choose between Africa, on the one hand,
and "yellow Asia and…the South seas," on the other. But that, it seems
to me, is just the choice that racism imposes on us--and just the choice
we must reject.
○
•
Du Bois is an intrinsic racist, while his theoretical racism was extrinsic•
"The truth is that there are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do
all we ask race to do for us."
"though he saw the dawn coming, he never faced the sun."
○
We all live in the dusk of that dawn
○
•
Civilisations are socially constructed - if we didn't have society, we wouldn’t
have civilisation
But that does not mean it is not real
○
•
Dworkin -redefining nonviolence
Women are more oppressed than minority racial groups
Not just by the professional world, but by their own fathers, husbands,
brothers, etc.
○
Racially oppressed people can at least retreat to their own community
and family
○
Women are blood-related to their oppressors whereas this is usually
not the case with racial minorities
○
•
To not actively prevent violence is to be complicit/encourage violence
Allies are willing to lay down their lives to combat sexism
○
•
To be truly nonviolenct requires traditionally (patriarchally) "violent" actions
Violent acts committed in self-defence reduce violence overall
○
•
We need to know the kinds and degrees of violence in order to know how to
prevent them
•
Davis - Eugenics + prison industrial complex
Joseph - why white women have power over black men
Lorde - poetry and economic position
Poetry is a resource that doesn’t use quite as much energy in expressing oppression•
How can we be equal if we're different?•
It's not the differences, it's the refusal to recognise differences
Must be seen as a source of strength rather than division•
Distinction between poetry and prose:
Prose = serious and rigorous, but requires more financial security ('room of one's
own' -Woolf)
You need a room, a word processor, time, etc.
Poetry is the most economical art form
Woolf - women are not in the right situation to write literature
They don’t have a room where they can sit and write for long periods of time
Their time is taken up with domestic labour and stuff
Lower class women more likely to represent their situation with poetry
Sculpting, painting, photography, etc. - needs materials
High art/Low art distinction
Used to be a distinction until the enlightenment
Rise of classical music orchestra
Only accessible to upper classes
Ageism - young women not inclined to listen to what old women listen to
So we can't ignore the differences of race between men and women
White women ignore the differences with women of colour:
They have to acknowledge their own advantages
Undermines unity of women
We need to acknowledge difference and realise that there are similarities
White women and WoC are not oppressed in the same way
But the end result is the same
The idea that there is only one dimension of human difference - that of men and
women - is a tool of social control
Equality is recognition of and respect for non-identity
Our diversity will be our strength
Oppressive structures are embedded in us and we need to work hard to change
them
E.g. high art, low art distinction
Exam Revision
Saturday, April 8, 2017 8:39 PM
Document Summary
Where "power is transferred from the privileged to the privileged" and. "the mass of producers will change their masters" - the structure of society does not change. A proletarian general strike "announces its indifference toward material gain through conquest by declaring its intention to abolish the state" - everything goes - rebuilding social structure from the ground up. Strikes are unjustly violent when they are exploitative or extortionate. Extortionate if they return to work when they get superficial modifications to their demands. General political strike is violent - same "rot" as police. Violent general proletarian strike need not have this "rot" - can be justified. The strike must be anarchistic - the aftermath can"t be planned out. You have to see what organically grows in its place. General proletarian strike can be good, general political strike cannot. All women are oppressed, all men are not. Double binds - every option has penalties and punishments.
