Thursday 4 April 2013

Capitalism, The Highest Stage Of Patriarchy

Mary Malone writes;

Capitalism is the numbering of every object, the quantifying of every action.
An action is the affirmation of an individual's power. Once that action has been quantified and numbered it can be taxed, and the action is transformed into capital and expropriated by Patriarchy and its managers.
A small fragment of that person’s power is returned to them in the form of wages. In early capitalist Patriarchy women have little or no wages and hence little or no power. So, women have to beg, cajole or perform to wheedle money, the tokens of expropriated power, from men.
In the more advanced economies (those economies with the greatest degree of passivity amongst the population) women often earn a wage, but there is an even greater Denial of Woman.
Women's activities have been expropriated. The whole of society is colonised by capital. Child care, health care, the enjoyment of music, the making of clothes, medicine, the cooking of meals,  the forming of opinions, the dreams and aspirations of every individual are centralized by capital and then redistributed by the managers of power.
The early stage of capitalism, that of capital formation, is marked by the brutal subjugation and pacification of the native working class or the indigenous population and of women too. Land that belongs to everyone is taken away and turned into the private domain of the managers of capital. This has been the same the world over. Without access to land people become dependent.
The capitalist patriarchal state takes the independent power of the peasantry and transforms it into negative power, that is violence.
The capitalist patriarchal state turns activity into passivity.
In the past thirty years we have seen the mask of capitalist patriarchy slip, as the most advanced countries grow their economies, not through increased wealth creation, but through the colonizing and capitalizing of all human activity.
The inevitable consequence of capitalism and patriarchy is poverty and dependency, and the ever increasing Denial of Woman.

No comments:

Post a Comment