tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17759756.post7961435153320526826..comments2023-10-30T02:03:56.081+13:00Comments on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty: The greatest?Maiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17212711843307060731noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17759756.post-80450501887763488782007-09-10T23:37:00.000+12:002007-09-10T23:37:00.000+12:00So he does - I forgot about that. I agree it's a ...So he does - I forgot about that. I agree it's a good idea to have more of these sorts of discussions. ALthough I'm not sure that blogs (and particularly not indymedia) are particularly useful vehicles for them. But it's what I've got.Maiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17212711843307060731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17759756.post-15166714860892091132007-09-10T23:09:00.000+12:002007-09-10T23:09:00.000+12:00'I'm not sure anyone has associated John Minto's i...'I'm not sure anyone has associated John Minto's ideas with Marxism'<BR/><BR/>I thought he did, at the end of the talk! It's good he's gotten a debate going, anyway - there aren't enough discussions of this kind on the Kiwi left.mapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18209906216745532870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17759756.post-29317403135394739412007-09-10T22:28:00.000+12:002007-09-10T22:28:00.000+12:00Anna-Claire: Thanks for your comment. I agree tha...Anna-Claire: Thanks for your comment. I agree that intersectionality (for want of a better word - I'm sure there must be a more powerful word that says the same thing), is a really important point for analysis.<BR/><BR/>I agree with you about the importance of keeping unpaid labour front and centre.<BR/><BR/>Maps - I agree with most of what you say.<BR/><BR/>I've heard that thought experiment before, I'm not convinced it means anything (capitalism could survive without discriminating against gays and lesbians, but it couldn't survive without discriminating against people with physical disabilities, I'm not sure that means anything), but I'm also not convinced it's true. Capitalism needs reproduction to be unpaid, unvalued labour. I'm not sure I can imagine that being possible without a division on the grounds of gender. <BR/><BR/>I agree that there was no inevitability that the colonising nations had white skin, and the colonised had brown skin. But I don't think that means anything - we live in this world, not the hypothetical alternative. <BR/><BR/>I don't think feminists are any more responsible for Helen Clark's feminism, than socialists are for her claims to represent working people (which admittedly are few and far between nowadays, but she's only sounded feminists twice in the last 8 years, so it's all much of a muchness).<BR/><BR/>I'm not sure anyone has associated John Minto's ideas with Marxism - although obviously there is a connection.Maiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17212711843307060731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17759756.post-57205727738382227092007-09-10T16:48:00.000+12:002007-09-10T16:48:00.000+12:00I tend to agree with what you say. I think John Mi...I tend to agree with what you say. <BR/><BR/>I think John Minto's slogan is correct only in a very general, very abstract sense. Class distinctions are more fundamental to the maintenance of capitalism to the extent that it would be impossible to abolish the capital-labour relation and still have capitalism, where it would be possible - theoretically - for the<BR/>oppression of women and colonised peoples to be abolished within the framework of capitalism. There's nothing in the logic of the capital-labour relationship which precludes, say, a Maori ruling class in Aotearoa, or a Polynesian Empire exploiting the US. <BR/><BR/>In the real world, though, the way that capitalism was established and has spread around the globe makes it almost inconceivable that oppressed peoples could turn the tables and become oppressors.<BR/><BR/>Capitalism could only come into being because of the primitive accumulation made possible by the dispossession of indigenous peoples in places like the Americas, and it has only managed to survive by institutionalising the exploitation of the semi-colonial 'peripheral' countries by the imperialist countries of the First World. <BR/><BR/>As long as they stay locked into an economic grid which assigns them the roles of providers of cheap labour and cheap exports of raw materials, the countries of the 'developing' world will always be on a hiding to nothing. Only those countries that overturn capitalism and break out of the grid have been able to establish the economic independence the Western nations take for granted. <BR/><BR/>I think the same logic applies to oppressed groups within individual countries. In New Zealand, the development of capitalism was only made possible by the destruction of the non-capitalist economy Maori had established, amidst the sort of 'enclosures' that Marx had described taking place in Scotland and England in Capital. <BR/><BR/>Maori were driven to the edges of the new economy, and became first a reserve army of labour and later a supply of cheap labour. A few te reo courses are not going to break them out of the marginal place they have been assigned in our society. <BR/><BR/>Similarly, women have played a vital role in stimulating profits and getting the ball of capital accumulation going by offering unpaid domestic labour and acting as a cheap source of casual labour. <BR/><BR/>Minto wants us to focus on the working class, and it's easy to understand why, as a veteran activist of great integrity, he is disgusted by the self-proclaimed feminists in the Labour government, or the 'corporate warriors' of the browntable. But even if we reject the simplistic and self-serving class-free politics of these types, there's no reason to go to the opposite extreme and focus on class at the expense of other categories. <BR/><BR/>As you point out, everyone who works is a lot more than a worker. You can't understand anything about the composition of the working class in New Zealand without taking into account the history of the dispossession and oppression of Maori, or the peculiar role that capitalism has assigned to women. <BR/><BR/>Nor are we going to impress Polynesian and female workers by telling them to forget about everything except their class status. At the place where I'm working at the moment probably 75% of the staff is Polynesian. Virtually all of the political conversations I've had with other staff members have revolved around various issues they face as Maori or Pacific Islanders. Telling these people that race and culture are secondary issues, and that a dead white guy with a hippy beard has all the answers is not likely to go down well. <BR/><BR/>At the same time, I think it's unfair to associate Marx with an analysis of the world that reduces everything to class and simple economics. (I've just been trying to rescue him here:<BR/>http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2007/09/chavez-is-not-marxist-but-neither-was.html)<BR/><BR/>I think John Minto could learn a lot from Marx's dialectical method, which involves the 'abstracting' of particular aspects of social reality and the building up of a complex picture of the world out of multiple abstractions. We require multiple abstractions to capture the complex, multi-faceted nature of the society we live in and the identities we hold as members of that society. Class, race, gender, culture - all these must be understood as mutually determining parts of a complex whole. Bertell Ollman is worth reading:<BR/>http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/dd_ch05a.php<BR/>(Maps)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17759756.post-5651028776074147742007-09-10T12:32:00.000+12:002007-09-10T12:32:00.000+12:00Thanks for this post Maia, its really interesting....Thanks for this post Maia, its really interesting. I missed Minto's talk when he came to Otautahi, but had a feeling from the title it might be quite provoking.<BR/><BR/><BR/>I think alot about the links between oppression of womn and indigenous peoples.<BR/>Our bodies were the first colonised land. The white colonisers of Aotearoa honed their oppressive ways breaking down and controlling womn back in the "motherland".<BR/><BR/>For example, the burning of witches was the natural precursor to Tohunga Suppression Bill of 1907 and similiar laws in colonised lands around the world.<BR/><BR/>As for unions and womn's rights, when are unions going to start doing workplace visits to homes, where the majority of the work is done? Or do you not count as a worker if you're not paid?<BR/><BR/>I agree that the watered down feminism, which demands all white, male, middle class priviledges be available to all white, middle class womn, is a load of bollocks. <BR/><BR/>The greatest success of the womn's movement in Aotearoa is the numbers of strong girls and womn today who are unwilling to put up with oppression of anyone, anywhere. period.<BR/><BR/>Peace,<BR/>Anna-ClaireAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com