![]() ![]() There is nothing to be gained by concealing this truth.’ footnote 1 The chief means of fulfilment in life is to be a member of, and reproduce a family. It is significant that a Socialist usually addresses a colleague as “brother” and a Communist uses the term “comrade”. Extreme attempts to create societies on a basis other than the family have failed dismally. A locus classicus of these attitudes is Peter Townsend’s remarkable statement: ‘Traditionally Socialists have ignored the family or they have openly tried to weaken it-alleging nepotism and the restrictions placed upon individual fulfilment by family ties. In England, the cultural heritage of Puritanism, always strong on the Left, contributed to a widespread diffusion of essentially conservative beliefs among many who would otherwise count themselves as ‘progressive’. Perhaps no other major issue has been so forgotten. Yet today, in the West, the problem has become a subsidiary, if not an invisible element in the preoccupations of socialists. It is part of the classical heritage of the revolutionary movement. The problem of the subordination of women and the need for their liberation was recognized by all the great socialist thinkers in the 19th century. The ancients provide a narrow satisfaction, whereas the modern world leaves us unsatisfied or where it appears to be satisfied with itself, is vulgar and mean.’ in one way the child-like world of the ancients appears to be superior, and this is so, insofar as we seek for closed shape, form and established limitation. ![]() But what Marx wrote about the bourgeois myths of the Golden Ancient World describes precisely women’s realm: ‘. The apparently natural condition can be made to appear more attractive than the arduous advance of human beings towards culture. The ‘true’ woman and the ‘true’ family are images of peace and plenty: in actuality they may both be sites of violence and despair. Both can be exalted paradoxically, as ideals. It is the function of ideology to present these given social types as aspects of Nature itself. There is nothing inevitable about the form or role of the family any more than there is about the character or role of women. ![]() Like woman herself, the family appears as a natural object, but it is actually a cultural creation. But women are offered a universe of their own: the family. Until there is a revolution in production, the labour situation will prescribe women’s situation within the world of men. ![]() Yet it is through work that man changes natural conditions and thereby produces society. In advanced industrial society, women’s work is only marginal to the total economy. The one state justifies the other and precludes protest. Within the world of men their position is comparable to that of an oppressed minority: but they also exist outside the world of men. It is precisely this combination-fundamental and marginal at one and the same time-that has been fatal to them. They are fundamental to the human condition, yet in their economic, social and political roles, they are marginal. Women are essential and irreplaceable they cannot therefore be exploited in the same way as other social groups can. This is because they are not one of a number of isolable units, but half a totality: the human species. T he situation of women is different from that of any other social group. ![]()
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