Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 15-16

As long as the Western economies were experiencing an ever-expanding growth of their GNPs they could afford to neutralize social dissent and social unrest like that of the women by throwing some crumbs to such disenchanted groups. Under the pressure of the women's movement, certain reforms were introduced like a certain liberalization of the abortion laws, reforms of divorce laws, etc. And in some countries, as in Holland, the state even created commissions for the emancipation of women, and women's action and consciousness-raising groups could demand state support for their activities. Also, in the USA departments of women's studies were established in most universities without great opposition. Although this all needed a lot of struggle from the women's movement, there was a certain paternalistic benevolence in granting 'the girls' a certain niche in the system. Already at this stage the various patriarchal establishments used their power to co-opt women and to integrate their rebellion into the system. But the deepening of the economic crisis at the beginning of the 1980s, and the rise of conservative governments and tendencies in most Western countries with their new policies of restructuring the economy also marked the end of fair-weather or welfare-state feminism. In several countries, particularly in the USA and West Germany, conservative governments launched a virtual attack on some of the half-hearted reforms achieved under the pressure of the new women's movement, above all on the liberalized abortion laws. This roll-back strategy with its renewed emphasis on the patriarchal family, on heterosexuality, on the ideology of motherhood, on women's 'biological' destiny, their responsibility for housework and childcare, and the overall attack on feminism had the effect that women who had hoped that women's liberation could come as a result of some legal reforms or consciousness-raising withdrew from the movement or or even became hostile to it....

This roll-back strategy, however, is only the political manifestation of more fundamental structural changes in the Western economies which are usually referred to as 'flexibilization of labour'. Women are the immediate targets of this strategy. The new strategy of rationalization, computerization and automation of production processes and jobs in the service sector has the effect that women are the first to be pushed out of well-paid, qualified and secure jobs in the 'formal sector'. But they are not just being sent back to home and hearth. They are in fact pushed into a whole range of unqualified, low-paid, insecure jobs which they have to do on top of their housework, which, more than ever, is considered their true vocation. And, contrary to the official conservative ideology on women and the family, the family is no longer a place where women can be sure to find their material existence secured. Man-the-breadwinner, though still the main ideological figure behind the new policies, is empirically disappearing from the stage. Not only does the rising unemployment of men make their role of breadwinner a precarious one, but marriage for women is also no longer an economic guarantee of their lifelong livelihood.

Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude page 19

They didn't even neglect, these Roman emperors, to assume generally the title of Tribune of the People, partly because this office was held sacred and inviolable and also because it had been founded for the defense and protection of the people and enjoyed the favor of the state. By this means they made sure that the populace would trust them completely, as if they merely used the title and did not abuse it. Today there are some who do not behave very differently; they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.

William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch pages 153-154

The forms of democracy are scrupulously enforced on the Island. There is a Senate and a Congress who carry on endless sessions discussing garbage disposal and outhouse inspection, the only two questions over which they have jurisdiction. For a brief period in the mid-nineteenth century, they had been allowed to control the Dept. of Baboon Maintenance but this privilege had been withdrawn owing to absenteeism in the Senate.

The purple-assed Tripoli baboons had been brought to the Island by pirates in the seventeenth century. There was a legend that when the baboons left the Island it would fall. To whom or in what way is not specified, and it is a capital offense to kill a baboon, though the noxious behavior of these animals harries the citizens almost beyond endurance. Occasionally someone goes berserk, kills several baboons and himself.

The post of President is always forced on some particularly noxious and unpopular citizen. To be elected President is the greatest misfortune and disgrace that can befall an Islander. The humiliations and ignominy are such that few Presidents live out their full term of office, usually dying of a broken spirit after a year or two. The Expeditor had once been President and served the full five years of his term. Subsequently he changed his name and underwent plastic surgery, to blot out, as far as possible, the memory of his disgrace.

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow page 645

The Germans-and-Japs story was only one, rather surrealistic version of the real War. The real War is always there. The dying tapers off now and then, but the War is still killing lots and lots of people. Only right now it is killing them in more subtle ways. Often in ways that are too complicated, even for us, at this level, to trace. But the right people are dying, just as they do when armies fight. The ones who stand up, in Basic, in the middle of the machine-gun pattern. The ones who do not have faith in their Sergeants. The ones who slip and show a moment's weakness to the Enemy. These are the ones the War cannot use, and so they die. The right ones survive. The others, it's said, even know they have a short life expectancy. But they persist in acting the way they do. Nobody knows why. Wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate them completely? Then no one would have to be killed in the War.

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow page 521

It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted . . . secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology . . . by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, "Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more. . . . The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms--it was only staged to look that way--but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite . . .

Yes but Technology only responds..."All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it'll make you feel less responsible--but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are--"

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow page 105

She asks this seriously, as if there's a real conversion factor between information and lives. Well, strange to say, there is. Written down in the Manual, on file at the War Department. Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.

Chumbawamba, "The Candidates Find Common Ground" from Never Mind the Ballots

A: Full employment, slave labor, and schemes
B: An unemployed workforce, the capitalist's dream
A & B: But let's keep Britain working
   Either way we must keep Britain working
A: Conventional weapons to kill people nicely
B: Nuclear weapons to keep the peace
A & B: But weapons definitely
   Either way we must defend ourselves
A: Nationalization, with one big boss
B: No, privatization, with lots of little bosses
A & B: But someone in control, of course
   Either way there must be someone giving orders

chorus:
A toast to democracy
The prison guard of this society
Sides in the voting game
Disappear into the same machine

A toast
To US bases and nuclear weapons
To stopping pickets, pulling down fences
To the British troops in Northern Ireland
To the wonderful victory in the Falklands
To the plastic bullet and the riot police
To the UDM, to the TUC
To isolating gays and to law and to order
To richer bosses, to poorer workers

chorus

A toast
To longer hours and to less pay
To the courts for those who get in our way
To the beating of the people who step out of line
To the use of troops to break a strike
To the expulsion of extremists and to political witch hunts
To repatriation, to benefit cuts
To peaceful settlements, and to no strike agreements
To authority, to power, to governments

To the annual rise in the MP's wage
To vested interests, to privilege
To the party who wins the next election
By definition a victory to capitalism