[A]t his request Pae had taken him to Saemtenevia Prospect, the elegant retail street of Nio Esseia, to be fitted by a tailor and a shoemaker.
The whole experience had been so bewildering to him that he put it out of mind as soon as possible, but he had dreams about it for months afterwards, nightmares. Saemtenevia Prospect was two miles long, and it was a solid mass of people, traffic, and things: things to buy, things for sale. Coats, dresses, gowns, robes, trousers, breeches, shirts, blouses, hats, shoes, stockings, scarves, shawls, vests, capes, umbrellas, clothes to wear while sleeping, while swimming, while playing games, while at an afternoon party, while at an evening party, while at a party in the country, while traveling, while at the theater, while riding horses, gardening, receiving guests, boating, dining, hunting--all different, all in hundreds of different cuts, styles, colors, textures, materials. Perfumes, clocks, lamps, statues, cosmetics, candles, pictures, cameras, games, vases, sofas, kettles, puzzles, pillows, dolls, colanders, hassocks, jewels, carpets, toothpicks, calendars, a baby's teething rattle of platinum with a handle of rock crystal, an electrical machine to sharpen pencils, a wristwatch with diamond numerals; figurines and souvenirs and kickshaws and mementos and gewgaws and bric-a-brac, everything either useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use; acres of luxuries, acres of excrement. In the first block Shevek had stopped to look at a shaggy, spotted coat, the central display in a glittering window of clothes and jewelry. "The coat costs 8,400 units?" he asked in disbelief, for he had recently read in a newspaper that a "living wage" was about 2,000 units a year. "Oh, yes, that's real fur, quite rare now that the animals are protected," Pae had said. "Pretty thing, isn't it? Women love furs." And they went on. After one more block Shevek felt utterly exhausted. He could not look any more. He wanted to hide his eyes.
And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession.
Showing posts with label commodities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commodities. Show all posts
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 216-219
Towards a feminist concept of labour
It is obvious...that the development of a feminist concept of labour has to begin with a rejection of the distinction between socially necessary labour and leisure, and the Marxist view that self-realization, human happiness, freedom, autonomy--the realm of freedom--can be achieved only outside the sphere of necessity and of necessary labour, and by a reduction (or abolition) of the latter.
1. If we take as our model of a 'worker' not the white male industrial wage-worker..., but a mother, we can immediately see that her work does not fit into the Marxian concept. For her, work is always both: a burden as well as a source of enjoyment, self-fulfilment, and happiness. Children may give her a lot of work and trouble, but this work is never totally alienated or dead. Even when children turn out to be a disappointment for the mother, when they eventually leave her or feel contempt for her--as in fact many do in our society--the pain she suffers at all this is still more human than the cold indifference of the industrial worker or engineer vis-à-vis his products, the commodities he produces and consumes.
The same unity of work as a burden and work as enjoyment can be found among peasants whose production is not yet totally subsumed under commodity production and the compulsions of the market. The peasants who have to work from dawn to dusk during the harvesting season, for instance, feel the burden of work more than anybody else in their bodies and in their muscles. But in spite of the hardship of this work, it is never only 'a curse'. I remember the times of haymaking or harvesting on our small subsistence farm in my childhood as times of extreme labour intensity for everyone--mother, children, father--and as times of the greatest excitement, enjoyment, social interaction... Anyone who has had an opportunity to observe the work-process of people involved in non-market oriented subsistence production will have found this interplay of work as necessity and burden, and work as a basic source of enjoyment and self-expression.
The same is true for the work of the artisan or in handicrafts production, as long as this work is not yet fully subsumed under the compulsions of the market.
The main characteristics of the work-processes described above is that they are all connected with the direct production of life or of use values. A feminist concept of labour has to be oriented towards the production of life as the goal of work and not the production of things and of wealth..., of which the production of life is then a secondary derivative. The production of immediate life in all its aspects must be the core concept for the development of a feminist concept of work.
2. ...[A] feminist concept of labour cannot be based on the Marxist (and capitalist) economics of time. The shortening of the daily labour time or of the labour time within a life span cannot be a method for the realization of a feminist utopia. Women have by now realized that the reduction of time spent in commodity production does not lead to more freedom for women, but rather to more housework, more non-wage work in household production, more relationship or emotional work, more consumption work. The vision of a society in which almost all time is leisure time and labour time is reduced to a minimum is for women in many respects a vision of horror, not only because housework and non-wage work have never been included in the labour that is supposed to be reduced by machines, but also because it will be women who have to restore to the then idle men a sense of reality, meaning and life.
A feminist concept of labour has, therefore, to be oriented towards a different concept of time, in which time is not segregated into portions of burdensome labour and portions of supposed pleasure and leisure, but in which times of work and times of rest and enjoyment are alternating and interspersed. If such a concept and such an organization of time prevail, the length of the working-day is no longer very relevant. Thus, a long working-day and even a lifetime full of work, will not then be felt as a curse but as a source of human fulfilment and happiness.
Such a new concept of time cannot, of course, be brought about unless the existing sexual division of labour is abolished. Such a change, however, will not come, as some women expect, by a reduction of the working-day or week through rationalization and automation. The men whose weekly or daily or life labour time has already been shortened through modern technology do not share more of the housework, but rather engage in more drinking, more TV-watching, or in other male leisure time activities... The whole reduction of the work-day since the times of Marx and Engels has nowhere resulted in a change in the sexual division of labour, has not resulted in men feeling more responsible for housework, children, or the production of life.
3. The third element which has to be stressed in a feminist concept of labour is the maintenance of work as a direct and sensual interaction with nature, with organic matter and living organisms. In the Marxist concept of labour, this sensual, bodily interaction with nature--human nature as well as external nature--is largely eliminated because more and more machines are inserted between the human body and nature. These machines are, of course, supposed to give man dominance and power over 'wild' 'blind' nature, but at the same time they reduce his own sensuality. With the elimination of labour as necessity and burden, the potential of the human body for enjoyment, for sensuality and for erotic and sexual satisfaction, is also eliminated. As our body will ever be the base for our enjoyment and happiness, the destruction of sensuality, resulting from the interaction with machines rather than with living organisms, will only result in a pathological search for an idealized 'nature'. In a desperate effort to restore this lost sensuality to the (male) body, the female body is mystified as both 'pure or base nature' and as the goal of fulfilment of all desires...
4. Direct and sensual interaction with nature in the work process is not yet sufficient, however. This could also be realized through some sport or hobby. And, indeed, the architects of modern society are visualizing an increase of such physical activities as a kind of therapy for people who have been made redundant as workers through automation. But how long will hobbies and sports provide a sense of purpose and meaning to people, even if their daily requirements are provided for by the welfare state?
A feminist concept of labour has to maintain that work retains its sense of purpose, its character of being useful and necessary for the people who do it and those around them. This also means that the products of this labour are useful and necessary, and not just some luxuries or superfluous trash as are most of the handicrafts made today by women in 'income-generating activities' in Third World countries.
5. This sense of usefulness, necessity and purpose with regard to work and its products, however, can only be restored as the division and the distance between production and consumption are gradually abolished. Today, the division and alienation are, as we have seen, global. Third World women produce what they do not know, and First World women consume what they do not know.
Within a feminist perspective, production of life is the main goal of human activity. This necessitates that the processes of production of necessary things and processes of consumption are again brought together. Because only by consuming the things which we produce can we judge whether they are useful, meaningful and wholesome, whether they are necessary or superfluous. And only by producing what we consume can we know how much time is really necessary for the things we want to consume, what skills are necessary, what knowledge is necessary and what technology is necessary.
The abolition of the wide division between production and consumption, does not mean, of course, that every individual, or even every small community, must produce all they need and have to find everything in their ecological surroundings. But it does imply that the production of life is based on a certain autarkic relation of a certain community of people to a specific region, the size of which has to be determined on the basis of the principles spelt out at the beginning of this section. Goods and services imported into such a region should be the result of non-exploitative relations to nature, women and other peoples. The tendential bringing together of production and consumption will drastically reduce the possibilities for this exploitation, and largely increase the potential for resistance to economic and political blackmail and coercion.
It is obvious...that the development of a feminist concept of labour has to begin with a rejection of the distinction between socially necessary labour and leisure, and the Marxist view that self-realization, human happiness, freedom, autonomy--the realm of freedom--can be achieved only outside the sphere of necessity and of necessary labour, and by a reduction (or abolition) of the latter.
1. If we take as our model of a 'worker' not the white male industrial wage-worker..., but a mother, we can immediately see that her work does not fit into the Marxian concept. For her, work is always both: a burden as well as a source of enjoyment, self-fulfilment, and happiness. Children may give her a lot of work and trouble, but this work is never totally alienated or dead. Even when children turn out to be a disappointment for the mother, when they eventually leave her or feel contempt for her--as in fact many do in our society--the pain she suffers at all this is still more human than the cold indifference of the industrial worker or engineer vis-à-vis his products, the commodities he produces and consumes.
The same unity of work as a burden and work as enjoyment can be found among peasants whose production is not yet totally subsumed under commodity production and the compulsions of the market. The peasants who have to work from dawn to dusk during the harvesting season, for instance, feel the burden of work more than anybody else in their bodies and in their muscles. But in spite of the hardship of this work, it is never only 'a curse'. I remember the times of haymaking or harvesting on our small subsistence farm in my childhood as times of extreme labour intensity for everyone--mother, children, father--and as times of the greatest excitement, enjoyment, social interaction... Anyone who has had an opportunity to observe the work-process of people involved in non-market oriented subsistence production will have found this interplay of work as necessity and burden, and work as a basic source of enjoyment and self-expression.
The same is true for the work of the artisan or in handicrafts production, as long as this work is not yet fully subsumed under the compulsions of the market.
The main characteristics of the work-processes described above is that they are all connected with the direct production of life or of use values. A feminist concept of labour has to be oriented towards the production of life as the goal of work and not the production of things and of wealth..., of which the production of life is then a secondary derivative. The production of immediate life in all its aspects must be the core concept for the development of a feminist concept of work.
2. ...[A] feminist concept of labour cannot be based on the Marxist (and capitalist) economics of time. The shortening of the daily labour time or of the labour time within a life span cannot be a method for the realization of a feminist utopia. Women have by now realized that the reduction of time spent in commodity production does not lead to more freedom for women, but rather to more housework, more non-wage work in household production, more relationship or emotional work, more consumption work. The vision of a society in which almost all time is leisure time and labour time is reduced to a minimum is for women in many respects a vision of horror, not only because housework and non-wage work have never been included in the labour that is supposed to be reduced by machines, but also because it will be women who have to restore to the then idle men a sense of reality, meaning and life.
A feminist concept of labour has, therefore, to be oriented towards a different concept of time, in which time is not segregated into portions of burdensome labour and portions of supposed pleasure and leisure, but in which times of work and times of rest and enjoyment are alternating and interspersed. If such a concept and such an organization of time prevail, the length of the working-day is no longer very relevant. Thus, a long working-day and even a lifetime full of work, will not then be felt as a curse but as a source of human fulfilment and happiness.
Such a new concept of time cannot, of course, be brought about unless the existing sexual division of labour is abolished. Such a change, however, will not come, as some women expect, by a reduction of the working-day or week through rationalization and automation. The men whose weekly or daily or life labour time has already been shortened through modern technology do not share more of the housework, but rather engage in more drinking, more TV-watching, or in other male leisure time activities... The whole reduction of the work-day since the times of Marx and Engels has nowhere resulted in a change in the sexual division of labour, has not resulted in men feeling more responsible for housework, children, or the production of life.
3. The third element which has to be stressed in a feminist concept of labour is the maintenance of work as a direct and sensual interaction with nature, with organic matter and living organisms. In the Marxist concept of labour, this sensual, bodily interaction with nature--human nature as well as external nature--is largely eliminated because more and more machines are inserted between the human body and nature. These machines are, of course, supposed to give man dominance and power over 'wild' 'blind' nature, but at the same time they reduce his own sensuality. With the elimination of labour as necessity and burden, the potential of the human body for enjoyment, for sensuality and for erotic and sexual satisfaction, is also eliminated. As our body will ever be the base for our enjoyment and happiness, the destruction of sensuality, resulting from the interaction with machines rather than with living organisms, will only result in a pathological search for an idealized 'nature'. In a desperate effort to restore this lost sensuality to the (male) body, the female body is mystified as both 'pure or base nature' and as the goal of fulfilment of all desires...
4. Direct and sensual interaction with nature in the work process is not yet sufficient, however. This could also be realized through some sport or hobby. And, indeed, the architects of modern society are visualizing an increase of such physical activities as a kind of therapy for people who have been made redundant as workers through automation. But how long will hobbies and sports provide a sense of purpose and meaning to people, even if their daily requirements are provided for by the welfare state?
A feminist concept of labour has to maintain that work retains its sense of purpose, its character of being useful and necessary for the people who do it and those around them. This also means that the products of this labour are useful and necessary, and not just some luxuries or superfluous trash as are most of the handicrafts made today by women in 'income-generating activities' in Third World countries.
5. This sense of usefulness, necessity and purpose with regard to work and its products, however, can only be restored as the division and the distance between production and consumption are gradually abolished. Today, the division and alienation are, as we have seen, global. Third World women produce what they do not know, and First World women consume what they do not know.
Within a feminist perspective, production of life is the main goal of human activity. This necessitates that the processes of production of necessary things and processes of consumption are again brought together. Because only by consuming the things which we produce can we judge whether they are useful, meaningful and wholesome, whether they are necessary or superfluous. And only by producing what we consume can we know how much time is really necessary for the things we want to consume, what skills are necessary, what knowledge is necessary and what technology is necessary.
The abolition of the wide division between production and consumption, does not mean, of course, that every individual, or even every small community, must produce all they need and have to find everything in their ecological surroundings. But it does imply that the production of life is based on a certain autarkic relation of a certain community of people to a specific region, the size of which has to be determined on the basis of the principles spelt out at the beginning of this section. Goods and services imported into such a region should be the result of non-exploitative relations to nature, women and other peoples. The tendential bringing together of production and consumption will drastically reduce the possibilities for this exploitation, and largely increase the potential for resistance to economic and political blackmail and coercion.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 211-212
[A] feminist perspective has to start with some basic principles, which can guide political action at all levels. The following seem to me the most basic:
- Rejection and abolition of the principle of colonizing dualistic divisions (between men and women, different peoples and classes, man and nature, spirit and matter) based on exploitation for the sake of ever-expanding commodity production and capital accumulation.
- This implies the creation of non-exploitative, non-hierarchical, reciprocal relationships between parts of our body; people and nature; women and men; different sections and classes of one society; different peoples.
- A necessary consequence of non-exploitative relations with ourselves, nature, other human beings and other peoples or nations will be the regaining of autonomy over our bodies and our lives. This autonomy means, first and foremost, that we cannot be blackmailed, or forced to do things which are against human dignity in exchange for the means of our subsistence or our life. Autonomy in this sense should not be understood individualistically and idealistically--as it often is by feminists--because no single woman in our atomized society is able to preserve her autonomy. Indeed, it is the antithesis of autonomy if it is understood in this narrow egotistic sense. Because the enslavement of the consumers under capitalist conditions of generalized commodity production is brought about precisely by the illusion that each individual can buy her or his independence from other human beings and social relations by the purchase of commodities.
Autonomy understood as freedom from coercion and blackmail regarding our lives and bodies, can be brought about only by collective effort in a decentralized, non-hierarchical way. - A rejection of the idea of infinite progress and acceptance of the idea that our human universe is finite, our body is finite, the earth is finite.
- The aim of all work and human endeavour is not a never-ending expansion of wealth and commodities, but human happiness (as the early socialists had seen it), or the production of life itself.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 208
[C]onsumerism is the drug by which women and men are made to accept otherwise inhuman, and increasingly destructive, conditions of life. The new 'needs', created by industry in its desperate effort to keep the growth model going are all of the type of addictions. The satisfaction of these addictions is no longer contributing to more happiness and human fulfilment, but to more destruction of the human essence.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 170-171
Economically this violence is always necessary when people still have some access to means of production. For example, peasants do not voluntarily begin to produce things which they do not consume themselves. Or they are evicted by force from their fields, or tribes are driven by force from their territory and re-settled in strategic villages.
Women's first and last 'means of production' is their own body. The worldwide increase in violence against women is basically concentrated on this 'territory', over which the BIG MEN have not yet been able to establish their firm and lasting dominance. This dominance is not only based on narrowly-defined economic considerations, although these play an important role, but the economic motives are intrinsically interwoven with political ones, with questions of power and control. Without violence and coercion, neither the modern men nor the modern states would be able to follow their model of progress and development which is based on dominance over nature.
Within the capitalist market economies, violence against women can, therefore, be explained by the necessity for 'ongoing primitive accumulation' which, according to André Gunder Frank, constitutes the precondition for the so-called 'capitalist' accumulation process. In a Third World country like India, the people who have become 'free' subjects in the sense described above is rather small. The fact that civil rights are enshrined in the Indian Constitution does not affect the de facto production relations which are, to a large extent, based on violence and coercion. We have seen that violence against women as an intrinsic element of the 'ongoing primitive accumulation of capital' constitutes the fastest and most 'productive' method if a man wants to join the brotherhood of the 'free' subjects of owners of private property.
Violence against women and extracting women's labour through coercive labour relations are, therefore, part and parcel of capitalism. They are necessary for the capitalist accumulation process and not peripheral to it. In other words, capitalism has to use, to strengthen, or even to invent, patriarchal men-women relations if it wants to maintain its accumulation model. If all women in the world had become 'free' wage-earners, 'free' subjects, the extraction of surplus would, to say the least, be severely hampered. This is what women as housewives, workers, peasants, prostitutes, from Third World and First World countries, have in common.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 120-121
This strategy of mobilizing poor, cheap, docile, dexterous, submissive Third World women [the adjectives refer to previously described Third World government-sponsored advertisements aimed at capitalists -Ethan] for export-oriented production is only one side of the global division of labour. As we said before, it is not enough that these commodities are produced as cheaply as possible, they also have to be sold. In the marketing strategies of the Western and Japanese corporations which are thriving on the export-oriented production in Third World countries, Western women play a crucial role, too, but this time not as producers, but as consumers, as housewives, mothers, and sex objects.
As producers, women in Europe and the US were the first to be fired as a consequence of the new IDL [international division of labour -Ethan]. They lost their jobs in textile industries and electric industries. When Phillips in Eindhoven in Holland closed its factory there in order to re-open others in Third World countries, thousands of women lost their jobs. They were sent home to their kitches with the argument that they should show solidarity with Third World women who needed jobs, whereas in Holland the husband's income was so high that a woman could stay at home and use her time to look after her children better. At the same time, the same multinational corporations mobilize women constantly as buyers of their goods. The tremendous expansion of TV and the introduction of cable TV have as their main purpose the expansion of advertising. Most of the advertising is directed towards women as consumers, or the advertisements themselves contain images of women as sex symbols as their most important ingredient. Here we see the new IDL divides the world up into producers and consumers, but it also divides women internationally and class-wise into producers and consumers. This relationship is structured in such a way that Third World women are objectively--not subjectively--linked to First World women through the commodities which the latter buy. This is not only a contradictory relationship, but also one in which the two actors on each side of the globe do not know anything of each other. The women in South and South-East Asia hardly know what they produce or for whom they make the things they make. On the other hand, the Western housewife is totally oblivious of the female labour, the working conditions, the wages, etc., under which the things which she buys are produced. She is only interested in getting these things as cheaply as possible. She, as most others in Western countries, attributes the overabundance in our supermarkets to the 'productivity' of Western workers. We shall have to discuss the question of whether this contradictory strategy which divides women worldwide into workers and housewives contributes to women's liberation. It is often argued that this strategy gives jobs to Third World women and cheap consumer goods to Western women/housewives. So both should be happy. But if we look more closely at the consequences of this strategy, we may come to another conclusion, namely, that the enslavement and exploitation of one set of women is the foundation of a qualitatively different type of enslavement of another set of women. One is a condition as well as the consequence of the other.
As producers, women in Europe and the US were the first to be fired as a consequence of the new IDL [international division of labour -Ethan]. They lost their jobs in textile industries and electric industries. When Phillips in Eindhoven in Holland closed its factory there in order to re-open others in Third World countries, thousands of women lost their jobs. They were sent home to their kitches with the argument that they should show solidarity with Third World women who needed jobs, whereas in Holland the husband's income was so high that a woman could stay at home and use her time to look after her children better. At the same time, the same multinational corporations mobilize women constantly as buyers of their goods. The tremendous expansion of TV and the introduction of cable TV have as their main purpose the expansion of advertising. Most of the advertising is directed towards women as consumers, or the advertisements themselves contain images of women as sex symbols as their most important ingredient. Here we see the new IDL divides the world up into producers and consumers, but it also divides women internationally and class-wise into producers and consumers. This relationship is structured in such a way that Third World women are objectively--not subjectively--linked to First World women through the commodities which the latter buy. This is not only a contradictory relationship, but also one in which the two actors on each side of the globe do not know anything of each other. The women in South and South-East Asia hardly know what they produce or for whom they make the things they make. On the other hand, the Western housewife is totally oblivious of the female labour, the working conditions, the wages, etc., under which the things which she buys are produced. She is only interested in getting these things as cheaply as possible. She, as most others in Western countries, attributes the overabundance in our supermarkets to the 'productivity' of Western workers. We shall have to discuss the question of whether this contradictory strategy which divides women worldwide into workers and housewives contributes to women's liberation. It is often argued that this strategy gives jobs to Third World women and cheap consumer goods to Western women/housewives. So both should be happy. But if we look more closely at the consequences of this strategy, we may come to another conclusion, namely, that the enslavement and exploitation of one set of women is the foundation of a qualitatively different type of enslavement of another set of women. One is a condition as well as the consequence of the other.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 118-119
Almost at the same time as this new international division of labour was being worked out and put into practice, the world was made aware of the necessity of 'integrating women into development.' Already in 1970, Esther Boserup had found out that women had not benefited from whatever development had taken place in Third World countries. Here findings were corroborated by the many reports on the status of women prepared by governments for the UN World Conference on Women, held in Mexico in 1975. It was found out that women's status had deteriorated in most Third, and even First World countries in all spheres: in politics, employment, education, health, law. As a consequence, the World Plan of Action presented by this conference demanded that the governments make substantial efforts to remedy the situation and to integrate women into development. After this, the UN organizations, the World Bank, the NGOs, all began to talk of women, and to include a chapter on women and development in their programmes. Can we consider this as a genuine change of heart on the part of the male development planners? Were they now really interested in women's liberation after they had forgotten about them throughout all the previous years? And what did they, what do they, mean by 'integrating women into development'?
To begin with, let us not forget one thing: women were also integrated into the old strategy of development. Their unpaid or low paid labour as farm workers, as factory workers, as housewives had also been the base of what has been called modernization in developing countries. But this labour had remained invisible; it provided a lot of the subsistence basis on which male wage-labour could emerge. It subsidized the male wage. But now something else was meant. 'Integrating women into development' means, in most cases, getting women to work in some so-called income-generating activities, that is, to enter market-oriented production. It does not mean that women should expand their subsistence production, that they should try to get more control over land and produce more for their own consumption, more food, more clothes, etc., for themselves. Income in this strategy means money income. And money income can be generated only if women produce something which can be sold in the market. As purchasing power among poor Third World women is low, they have to produce something for people who have this purchasing power. And such people live in the cities in their own countries, or they live in the Western countries. This means that the strategy of integrating women's work into development also amounts to export- or market-oriented production. Poor Third World women produce not what they need, but what others can buy.
Another characteristic of this strategy is that it defines Third World women not as workers, but as housewives. What they do is not defined as work, but as an 'activity'. By universalizing the housewife ideology and the model of the nuclear family as signs of progress, it is also possible to define all the work women do--whether in the formal or informal sectors--as supplementary work, her income as supplementary income to that of the so-called main 'breadwinner', the husband. The economic logic of this housewifization is a tremendous reduction of labour costs. This is one of the reasons why international capital and its spokesmen are now interested in women.
To begin with, let us not forget one thing: women were also integrated into the old strategy of development. Their unpaid or low paid labour as farm workers, as factory workers, as housewives had also been the base of what has been called modernization in developing countries. But this labour had remained invisible; it provided a lot of the subsistence basis on which male wage-labour could emerge. It subsidized the male wage. But now something else was meant. 'Integrating women into development' means, in most cases, getting women to work in some so-called income-generating activities, that is, to enter market-oriented production. It does not mean that women should expand their subsistence production, that they should try to get more control over land and produce more for their own consumption, more food, more clothes, etc., for themselves. Income in this strategy means money income. And money income can be generated only if women produce something which can be sold in the market. As purchasing power among poor Third World women is low, they have to produce something for people who have this purchasing power. And such people live in the cities in their own countries, or they live in the Western countries. This means that the strategy of integrating women's work into development also amounts to export- or market-oriented production. Poor Third World women produce not what they need, but what others can buy.
Another characteristic of this strategy is that it defines Third World women not as workers, but as housewives. What they do is not defined as work, but as an 'activity'. By universalizing the housewife ideology and the model of the nuclear family as signs of progress, it is also possible to define all the work women do--whether in the formal or informal sectors--as supplementary work, her income as supplementary income to that of the so-called main 'breadwinner', the husband. The economic logic of this housewifization is a tremendous reduction of labour costs. This is one of the reasons why international capital and its spokesmen are now interested in women.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 67-68
The same can be said of capitalism. When capital accumulation became the dominant motor of productive activity in contrast to subsistence production, wage labour tended to become the dominant form of labour control. Yet these apparently 'peaceful' production-relations, based on mechanisms of economic coercion (structural violence), could be built up only on the base of a tremendous expansion of the predatory mode of acquisition. Direct and violent acquisition of gold and silver and other products, mainly in Hispanic America, and of producers--first the Indians in Latin America and later African slaves--proved to be the most 'productive' activity in what has been described as the period of 'primitive accumulation'.
Thus capitalism did not do away with the former 'savage' forms of control over human productive capacity, it rather reinforced and generalized them...
Thus capitalism did not do away with the former 'savage' forms of control over human productive capacity, it rather reinforced and generalized them...
Monday, August 22, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 35
Many feminists in the United States and Europe have, together with critical scientists and ecologists, begun to criticize the dualistic and destructive paradigm of Western science and technology. Drawing their inspiration from C.G. Jung's psychology, humanistic psychology, non-dualistic 'Eastern' spirituality, particularly Taoism and other oriental philosophies, they propose a new holistic paradigm, the New Age paradigm. This emphasis on the fact that in our world everything is connected with everything and influences everything is definitely an approach which goes along with much of the feminist rebellion and vision of a future society. However, if this desire to 'become whole' again, and to build bridges across all the cleavages and segmentations White Man has created is not to be frustrated again, it is necessary that the New Age feminists, the ec-feminists and others open their eyes and minds to the real colonies whose exploitation also guarantees them the luxury of indulging in 'Eastern spirituality' and 'therapy'. In other words, if the holistic paradigm is nothing but an affair of a new spiritualism or consciousness, if it does not identify and fight against the global system of capitalist accumulation and exploitation, it will end up by becoming a pioneering movement for the legitimization of the next round of the destructive production of capitalism. This round will not focus on the production and marketing of such crude material commodities as cars and refrigerators, but on non-material commodities like religion, therapies, friendship, spirituality, and also on violence and warfare, of course with the full use of the 'New Age' technologies.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Joanna Russ, "A Boy and His Dog: The Final Solution" in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, pages 71-72
It is nonsense to insist that the real danger in a tyrannical, self-hating, hypocritical, piously horrible society is pretty, scheming, little girls. The Nice Girl looks like the most sacred and the most privileged citizen of this ghastly community, but in reality her rights (as opposed to the rights of her owners) are nonexistent. In D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, for example, to lay a finger on Lillian Gish looks like a desecration, but she is far from being society or even a citizen of it; she has been invented, constructed, meant, put there in the film either to be raped or saved-from-rape--what other purpose can there possibly be for her unhuman helplessness and childishness? The Victorian gentlemen who so assiduously protected their daughters' maiden purity were not hypocrites when they visited whorehouses stocked with twelve-year-old girls; they were simply acting on the identical assumption about the high value of maiden purity. In such a setup, pretty girls are about as much privileged citizens as a diamond ring is a privileged citizen. Like money or jewels, women are counters for use in business or warfare between men. Punk loners (who are much more part of "society"...) can go on terrifying or killing waitresses or cheerleaders forever under the impression that they're heroically attacking society...
Confusing Nelson Rockefeller with his car is a useful delusion to inculcate in punks; this way they attack the car instead of the man. After all, if the punks ever found out the car was only a possession, there might be real trouble. But as long as movies assume that the use of women to bind men to respectability is an instinct or a scheme by women (who must act through men in order to attain any power or safety), and not a circumstance set up by powerful men, rebels can expend their emotion on reincarnations of the Bitch Goddess forever.
The war between fathers and sons is as chronic a conflict in patriarchy as the war between classes (that is, between upper-class and lower-class men), though not nearly as revolutionary in its potential. In both conflicts women are useful scapegoats, blamable and punishable for everything. After all, Son will eventually make it to the state of Father and will have his own Daughter/Wife he can own ("protect") from other Fathers, a Daughter he can give to another Son as payment for continuing the status quo. Son can even be counted on to punish Daughter if Daughter gets out of hand. Thus a real alliance between Daughter and Son is made eternally impossible, and luckily so, for such an alliance would be almost as dangerous for patriarchy as one between Daughter and Mother. Between classes, scapegoats are even more useful: Lower-class Man is not going to make it at all, i.e., he will never replace Upper-class Man; so using Lower/Upper-class Woman as scapegoat both distracts him from the real situation and bribes him to endure it.
The evils of female sexuality and the obligatory punishment of its carriers is the grand, eternally useful scapegoat of Western patriarchy. It is the one topic on which Fathers and Sons, Upper-class Men and Lower-class Men can heartily agree. And they can agree (and collude) while enjoying the comforting illusion that they are engaged in dangerous, revolutionary activities.
Confusing Nelson Rockefeller with his car is a useful delusion to inculcate in punks; this way they attack the car instead of the man. After all, if the punks ever found out the car was only a possession, there might be real trouble. But as long as movies assume that the use of women to bind men to respectability is an instinct or a scheme by women (who must act through men in order to attain any power or safety), and not a circumstance set up by powerful men, rebels can expend their emotion on reincarnations of the Bitch Goddess forever.
The war between fathers and sons is as chronic a conflict in patriarchy as the war between classes (that is, between upper-class and lower-class men), though not nearly as revolutionary in its potential. In both conflicts women are useful scapegoats, blamable and punishable for everything. After all, Son will eventually make it to the state of Father and will have his own Daughter/Wife he can own ("protect") from other Fathers, a Daughter he can give to another Son as payment for continuing the status quo. Son can even be counted on to punish Daughter if Daughter gets out of hand. Thus a real alliance between Daughter and Son is made eternally impossible, and luckily so, for such an alliance would be almost as dangerous for patriarchy as one between Daughter and Mother. Between classes, scapegoats are even more useful: Lower-class Man is not going to make it at all, i.e., he will never replace Upper-class Man; so using Lower/Upper-class Woman as scapegoat both distracts him from the real situation and bribes him to endure it.
The evils of female sexuality and the obligatory punishment of its carriers is the grand, eternally useful scapegoat of Western patriarchy. It is the one topic on which Fathers and Sons, Upper-class Men and Lower-class Men can heartily agree. And they can agree (and collude) while enjoying the comforting illusion that they are engaged in dangerous, revolutionary activities.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 32-33
In the physiological model of addiction there is an increasing spiral of physical need; in the cultural model, an increasing spiral of what I shall call (for want of a better term) emotional need... In Star Wars the need is for self-worth and pleasure (I believe this is what the "fun" represents). The means uses to achieve these are, roughly, sexism, racism, heterosexism, competition, and macho privilege. But this kind of privilege is exactly what is producing a world in which most of the viewers of Star Wars do not have the self-worth and the access to excitement and pleasure that they need.
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction page 31
[A]ddictive culture deals with issues people feel to be crucial in their lives, but instead of confronting these issues, addictive art merely reconfirms the values and internalized pressures that produced the issues in the first place. Addictive art is briefly palliating; the relief lasts only as long as the art does and one is left more needy than before, i.e., the cravings that were promised relief are now worse.
Star Wars, I think, addresses itself to a dim but powerful desire for "fun," i.e., excitement and self-importance. These are human desires and not bad ones, but the film satisfies them by simplifying morality, politics, and human personality to the point where they can all safely be ignored in the interests of the "fun." However, morality, politics, and human personality are most of the world and the film cannot actually do without them without renouncing drama altogether. Thus we have a work in which the result of the simplification isn't to banish morality, politics, and human personality (which is impossible) but to present them in their most reactionary--and dullest--form. Thus monarchies are better than republics, slavery is noble (the machines are conscious personalities endowed with emotions and free will but it is still unquestionably right to own them), everyone human in the film is white (with the possible exception of one extra in one scene), and after the hero's mother (disguised as his aunt to avoid the real parenticidal wishes no doubt present in the teenagers in the audience) dies, there is only one woman left in the entire universe. This universe then goes into terrific plot convulsions to aid, nurture, and glorify one very ordinary white, heterosexual, male, bucktoothed virgin.
Star Wars, I think, addresses itself to a dim but powerful desire for "fun," i.e., excitement and self-importance. These are human desires and not bad ones, but the film satisfies them by simplifying morality, politics, and human personality to the point where they can all safely be ignored in the interests of the "fun." However, morality, politics, and human personality are most of the world and the film cannot actually do without them without renouncing drama altogether. Thus we have a work in which the result of the simplification isn't to banish morality, politics, and human personality (which is impossible) but to present them in their most reactionary--and dullest--form. Thus monarchies are better than republics, slavery is noble (the machines are conscious personalities endowed with emotions and free will but it is still unquestionably right to own them), everyone human in the film is white (with the possible exception of one extra in one scene), and after the hero's mother (disguised as his aunt to avoid the real parenticidal wishes no doubt present in the teenagers in the audience) dies, there is only one woman left in the entire universe. This universe then goes into terrific plot convulsions to aid, nurture, and glorify one very ordinary white, heterosexual, male, bucktoothed virgin.
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 28-30
An addiction is a situation in of constantly escalating need--in short, of insatiability. Not only that, but the cause of the escalation is the satisfier of the need. Addiction is what people call a vicious circle--really an increasing spiral. The more you need, the more you get; the more you get, the more you have; the more you have, the more you need, and so on.
This model of addiction may be over-simple...but applied (by analogy) to certain economic and social phenomena, two things become strikingly apparent.
First, the addict is the ideal customer.
Second, addiction is a beautiful and effective method of social control. It is especially good at obfuscating and confusing--in political terms, mystifying--what it is that the addict really needs.
From the point of view of profits, the perfect stimulus is one which satisfies a human need only briefly or partially, and at the same time exacerbates the need. If the stimulus didn't satisfy the need at all, the customer would quit buying it out of frustration and disgust. If the stimulus fully satisfied the need, the customer would buy no more. (Certainly not beyond the recurrent biological demands of hunger, for example.)
That such stimuli abound in modern industrial society is an open secret. So is the fact that large numbers of people are paid large sums of money for inventing them and spreading them about...
Consider, for example, Star Wars. I was dragged to see this film past a bookstore displaying the sword-and-sorcery novel a friend of mine has rather unkindly nicknamed The Sword of Sha Na Na. What is important about coupling these two in one sentence (and one event) is not that the film is as bad as the book, but that both are bad in exactly the same way. This is not to say that either is without some interesting or seductive elements. For no addictive stimulus is simply bad or dull; if it were, nobody would want it at all. What such artifacts do is follow the formula for physiological addiction in the psychic, cultural realm: they satisfy a need partially, and at the same time they exacerbate it. Publishers' and movie-makers' formulas for a "real hit" are obviously those of an addiction: not just enjoyment or desire but intense craving (lines stretching around the block), not just intense craving but sudden intense craving that must be satisfied at once (opening in sixteen million theatres tomorrow, at a theatre near you!), not just sudden intense craving but insatiable craving; thus people see the film many times and--this is a dead giveaway--a minor industry grows up about the film: Buttons, sweatshirts, TV programs about how the film was made, TV programs about how the first TV programs about the film were made, and so on. These are what the trade calls "spin-offs."
Please note that addictive culture is not identical with what we like to call "escapist culture." Perhaps there is no way of escaping in art from one's society, as any social product will of necessity embody the society's values and pressures, and the less these values or pressures are confronted and examined in the work, the more in force they will be. Thus Star Wars--which is being sold to the public as "fun"--is, in fact, racist, grossly sexist, not apolitical in the least but authoritarian and morally imbecile, all of this both denied and enforced by the opportunism of camp (which the youngsters in the audience cannot spot, by the way) and spiced up by technical wonders and marvels, some of which are interesting, many of which are old hat to those used to science fiction. Addictive culture, to succeed, can't be all bad.
This model of addiction may be over-simple...but applied (by analogy) to certain economic and social phenomena, two things become strikingly apparent.
First, the addict is the ideal customer.
Second, addiction is a beautiful and effective method of social control. It is especially good at obfuscating and confusing--in political terms, mystifying--what it is that the addict really needs.
From the point of view of profits, the perfect stimulus is one which satisfies a human need only briefly or partially, and at the same time exacerbates the need. If the stimulus didn't satisfy the need at all, the customer would quit buying it out of frustration and disgust. If the stimulus fully satisfied the need, the customer would buy no more. (Certainly not beyond the recurrent biological demands of hunger, for example.)
That such stimuli abound in modern industrial society is an open secret. So is the fact that large numbers of people are paid large sums of money for inventing them and spreading them about...
Consider, for example, Star Wars. I was dragged to see this film past a bookstore displaying the sword-and-sorcery novel a friend of mine has rather unkindly nicknamed The Sword of Sha Na Na. What is important about coupling these two in one sentence (and one event) is not that the film is as bad as the book, but that both are bad in exactly the same way. This is not to say that either is without some interesting or seductive elements. For no addictive stimulus is simply bad or dull; if it were, nobody would want it at all. What such artifacts do is follow the formula for physiological addiction in the psychic, cultural realm: they satisfy a need partially, and at the same time they exacerbate it. Publishers' and movie-makers' formulas for a "real hit" are obviously those of an addiction: not just enjoyment or desire but intense craving (lines stretching around the block), not just intense craving but sudden intense craving that must be satisfied at once (opening in sixteen million theatres tomorrow, at a theatre near you!), not just sudden intense craving but insatiable craving; thus people see the film many times and--this is a dead giveaway--a minor industry grows up about the film: Buttons, sweatshirts, TV programs about how the film was made, TV programs about how the first TV programs about the film were made, and so on. These are what the trade calls "spin-offs."
Please note that addictive culture is not identical with what we like to call "escapist culture." Perhaps there is no way of escaping in art from one's society, as any social product will of necessity embody the society's values and pressures, and the less these values or pressures are confronted and examined in the work, the more in force they will be. Thus Star Wars--which is being sold to the public as "fun"--is, in fact, racist, grossly sexist, not apolitical in the least but authoritarian and morally imbecile, all of this both denied and enforced by the opportunism of camp (which the youngsters in the audience cannot spot, by the way) and spiced up by technical wonders and marvels, some of which are interesting, many of which are old hat to those used to science fiction. Addictive culture, to succeed, can't be all bad.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Shirley Jackson, The Sundial pages 185-187
"I'm only seventeen years old," Gloria said, "and I know this much--that world out there, Fancy, that world which is all around on the other side of the wall, it isn't real. It's real inside here, we're real, but what is outside is like it's made of cardboard, or plastic, or something. Nothing out there is real. Everything is made out of something else, and it all comes apart in your hands. The people aren't real, they're nothing but endless copies of each other, all looking just alike, like paper dolls, and they live in houses full of artificial things and eat imitation food--"
"My doll house," Fancy said, amused.
"Your dolls have little cakes and roasts made of wood and painted. Well, the people out there have cakes and bread and cookies made out of pretend flour, with all kinds of things taken out of it to make it prettier for them to eat, and all kinds of things put in to make it easier for them to eat, and they eat meat which has been cooked for them already so they won't have to bother doing anything except heat it up and they read newspapers full of nonsense and lies and one day they hear that some truth is being kept from them for their own good and the next day they hear that the truth is being kept from them because it was really a lie and the next day they hear--"
Fancy laughed. "You sound like you hate everything."
"I wouldn't like being a doll in a doll house, I can tell you. I'm only seventeen years old, but I've learned a lot. All those people out there know about things like love and tenderness is what they hear in songs or read in books--that's one reason I'm glad we burned all the books here. People shouldn't be able to read them and remember nothing but lies. And you talk about dances and parties--I can tell you there's no heart to anything any more; when you dance with a boy he's only looking over your shoulder at some other boy, and the only real people left any more are the shadows on the television screens."
"If I believed you," Fancy said, "I would still mind never trying things for myself. But I won't ever believe you until I've gone out there and seen it."
"There's nothing there," Gloria said with finality. "It's a make-believe world, with nothing in it but cardboard and trouble." She thought for a minute, and then said, "If you were a liar, or a pervert, or a thief, or even just sick, there wouldn't be anything out there you couldn't have.
Fancy bent over the doll house. "Anyway," she said, "I don't care how shabby it is. I'm not afraid of bad people, and of not being safe."
"But there aren't any good people," Gloria said helplessly. "No one is anything but tired and ugly and mean. I know."
"My doll house," Fancy said, amused.
"Your dolls have little cakes and roasts made of wood and painted. Well, the people out there have cakes and bread and cookies made out of pretend flour, with all kinds of things taken out of it to make it prettier for them to eat, and all kinds of things put in to make it easier for them to eat, and they eat meat which has been cooked for them already so they won't have to bother doing anything except heat it up and they read newspapers full of nonsense and lies and one day they hear that some truth is being kept from them for their own good and the next day they hear that the truth is being kept from them because it was really a lie and the next day they hear--"
Fancy laughed. "You sound like you hate everything."
"I wouldn't like being a doll in a doll house, I can tell you. I'm only seventeen years old, but I've learned a lot. All those people out there know about things like love and tenderness is what they hear in songs or read in books--that's one reason I'm glad we burned all the books here. People shouldn't be able to read them and remember nothing but lies. And you talk about dances and parties--I can tell you there's no heart to anything any more; when you dance with a boy he's only looking over your shoulder at some other boy, and the only real people left any more are the shadows on the television screens."
"If I believed you," Fancy said, "I would still mind never trying things for myself. But I won't ever believe you until I've gone out there and seen it."
"There's nothing there," Gloria said with finality. "It's a make-believe world, with nothing in it but cardboard and trouble." She thought for a minute, and then said, "If you were a liar, or a pervert, or a thief, or even just sick, there wouldn't be anything out there you couldn't have.
Fancy bent over the doll house. "Anyway," she said, "I don't care how shabby it is. I'm not afraid of bad people, and of not being safe."
"But there aren't any good people," Gloria said helplessly. "No one is anything but tired and ugly and mean. I know."
Monday, August 8, 2011
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing, page 119
There are other questions: why is "greatness" in art so often aggressive? Why does "great" literature have to be long? Is "regionalism" only another instance of down-grading the vernacular? Why is "great" architecture supposed to knock your eye out at first view, unlike "indigenous" architecture, which must be appreciated slowly and with knowledge of the climate in which it exists? Why is the design of clothing---those grotesque and sometimes perilously fantastic anatomical--social-role--characterological ideas of the person---a "minor" art? Because it has a use? In admiring "pure" (i.e., useless) art, are we not merely admiring Veblenian conspicuous consumption, like the Mandarin fingernail?
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation pages 104-105
Did workers in Europe know that they were buying products resulting from slave labor and, if they did, did they object to it? This is a question I would like to ask them, but it is one which I cannot answer. What is certain is that the history of tea, sugar, rum, tobacco, and cotton is far more significant than we can deduce from the contribution which these commodities made, as raw materials or means of exchange in the slave trade, to the rise of the factory system. For what traveled with these "exports" was not only the blood of the slaves but the seeds of a new science of exploitation, and a new division of the working class by which waged-work, rather than providing an alternative to slavery, was made to depend on it for its existence, as a means (like female unpaid labor) for the expansion of the unpaid part of the waged working-day.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned page 229
The astronomers have functioned bravely in the past. They've been good for business: the big interests think kindly, if at all, of them. It's bad for trade to have an intense darkness come upon an unaware community and frighten people out of their purchasing values. But if an obscuration be foretold, and if it then occur--may seem a little uncanny--only a shadow--and no one who was about to buy a pair of shoes runs home panic-stricken and saves the money.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance pages 861-862
The endpoint of civilization is assembly-line mass murder. The assembly-line mass murder of the Nazi Holocaust is production stripped of the veneer of economics. It is the very essence of production. It took the living and converted them to the dead. That's what this culture does. It was efficient, it was calculable, it was predictable, and it was controlled through nonhuman technologies. And it was also, as well as being grossly immoral, incredibly stupid. Even from the perspective of pure acquisitiveness and land-hunger, it was self-defeating. As German troops froze and starved on the Eastern Front, valuable railroad cars were used instead to move cargos that fed crematoria. The Nazis performed economic analyses showing that feeding slaves just a bit more increased their productivity more than enough to offset the extra cost of feed. Yet they were starved. Similarly, slaughtering Russians was foolish. Many Ukrainians and Russians greeted the Wehrmacht with kisses, open arms, and flowers, happy to be out from under the tyranny of Stalinism. The Germans quickly began murdering noncombatants to make room for the Germans who would move in after the war, or because they were told to, or because Russians were inferior, or for any of the reasons given for these slaughters since the beginning of civilization's wars of extermination. And so Russian noncombatants fought back. They blew up trains, they killed German officers, they picked off individual soldiers. They hurt the Germans. For all their vaunted rationality, the Germans weren't so very rational, were they?
Of course we're different now. We have rational reasons for the killings. There's no silly talk of master races and lebensraum. Instead, the economy is run along strictly rationalist lines. If something makes money, we do it, and if it doesn't, we don't (ignore for a moment that to divorce economics from morals and humanity is as evil as it is to do the same for science). But the United States economy costs at least five times as much as it's worth. Total annual U.S. corporate profits are about $500 billion, while the direct costs of the activities from which these profits derive are more than $2.5 trillion. These include $51 billion in direct subsidies and $53 billion in tax breaks, $274.7 billion lost because of deaths from workplace cancer, $225.9 billion lost because of the health costs of stationary source air pollution, and so on. This is to speak only of calculable costs, since other values--such as a living planet--do not, because they're not calculable, exist. The fact remains, however, that it is manifestly stupid to destroy your landbase, regardless of the abstract financial reward or esteem you may gain. Yet this culture spends more to build and maintain commercial fishing vessels than the fiscal value of the fish caught. The same is true for the destruction of forests. In the United States the Forest Service loses in a not atypical year $400 million dollars [sic] on its timber sale program, or about seven hundred and seventy-nine dollars per acre deforested.
Of course we're different now. We have rational reasons for the killings. There's no silly talk of master races and lebensraum. Instead, the economy is run along strictly rationalist lines. If something makes money, we do it, and if it doesn't, we don't (ignore for a moment that to divorce economics from morals and humanity is as evil as it is to do the same for science). But the United States economy costs at least five times as much as it's worth. Total annual U.S. corporate profits are about $500 billion, while the direct costs of the activities from which these profits derive are more than $2.5 trillion. These include $51 billion in direct subsidies and $53 billion in tax breaks, $274.7 billion lost because of deaths from workplace cancer, $225.9 billion lost because of the health costs of stationary source air pollution, and so on. This is to speak only of calculable costs, since other values--such as a living planet--do not, because they're not calculable, exist. The fact remains, however, that it is manifestly stupid to destroy your landbase, regardless of the abstract financial reward or esteem you may gain. Yet this culture spends more to build and maintain commercial fishing vessels than the fiscal value of the fish caught. The same is true for the destruction of forests. In the United States the Forest Service loses in a not atypical year $400 million dollars [sic] on its timber sale program, or about seven hundred and seventy-nine dollars per acre deforested.
Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance pages 819-820
We all--even those of us who are wildly anti-civ--buy far too much into the myth of the primacy of the machine. We believe civilization works. We believe civilization is resilient. Whether we want to admit it or not, we believe in the deus ex machina, the god in the machine who will save us in the end. This is certainly true of those who believe that science or technology will save us from problems partially created by science and technology. But nearly all of us believe in the machine far more deeply than that.
What do you do when you're thirsty? If you're like me, you go to the sink, and you're utterly certain that when you "turn on" the water it will flow from the tap. It's automatic. It's a complete, and completely invisible, belief backed up in the short term by consistent experience. Likewise when we flip a switch we're absolutely certain that ghost slaves will light up the night. We're certain that when we go to the grocery store we'll find food (which we can purchase from transnational corporations). It may surprise us to learn that for nearly all of our existence humans have had this faith not in technologies but in landbases. They knew for certain they could drink water from streams. They knew for certain the salmon would come, or the passenger pigeons, or the bison, or the char, or whatever creatures they relied on for food. But no more. Our faith has been replaced. Our new faith--deep, abiding, unshakable--is in civilization, that it will one way or another take care of us, that it will continue. This faith is strong enough that nearly all of us no longer perceive it as faith. Indeed, most of us do not even think about it at all. I would imagine the possibility that civilization will not take care of us into the foreseeable future is a thought that never once occurs to nearly all Americans in their entire lives. Not once. Civilization with all it entails is simply the way things are. Not many people consider themselves to have faith in gravity. Gravity just is, and if you trip you fall down. No faith is involved. Civilization is perceived the same way.
What do you do when you're thirsty? If you're like me, you go to the sink, and you're utterly certain that when you "turn on" the water it will flow from the tap. It's automatic. It's a complete, and completely invisible, belief backed up in the short term by consistent experience. Likewise when we flip a switch we're absolutely certain that ghost slaves will light up the night. We're certain that when we go to the grocery store we'll find food (which we can purchase from transnational corporations). It may surprise us to learn that for nearly all of our existence humans have had this faith not in technologies but in landbases. They knew for certain they could drink water from streams. They knew for certain the salmon would come, or the passenger pigeons, or the bison, or the char, or whatever creatures they relied on for food. But no more. Our faith has been replaced. Our new faith--deep, abiding, unshakable--is in civilization, that it will one way or another take care of us, that it will continue. This faith is strong enough that nearly all of us no longer perceive it as faith. Indeed, most of us do not even think about it at all. I would imagine the possibility that civilization will not take care of us into the foreseeable future is a thought that never once occurs to nearly all Americans in their entire lives. Not once. Civilization with all it entails is simply the way things are. Not many people consider themselves to have faith in gravity. Gravity just is, and if you trip you fall down. No faith is involved. Civilization is perceived the same way.
Derrick Jensen, Endgame vol. 2: Resistance page 766
Civilization has from the beginning devoted itself almost completely to conquest, to war. It's sometimes hard to say--and I'm not sure I care anyway--whether the civilized hyperexploit resources to fuel the war machine, or need a war machine to seize resources (which are then hyperexploited to fuel the war machine). It's probably a bit like asking whether the dominant culture is so destructive becasue most of its members are insane, suffering from a form of complex PTSD; or whether the dominant culture is so destructive because its materialistic system of social rewards--overvaluing the acquisition of wealth and power and undervaluing relationship--leads inevitably to hatred and atrocity; or whether the physical resource requirements of cities necessitate widespread violence and destruction. The answer is yes.
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