Those are only mysteries to sexists who just must pin the blame on the woman. What a great victim blamer you are, Celsus. You go right on having those paranoid fantasies about a horribly battered woman. Good job.

You can’t overthrow an economic system that is based on monetary exchange, by accepting money in exchange for promoting your viewpoint.

That’s well said, Rebecca. That sums up the whole problem. Abbie Hoffman compalined about “hip capitalism” which was trying to co-opt radical energy be re-uisng some of the slogans in advertising. To accept a paycheck in exchange for the chance to spread one’s opinions is also to asscept the values that are implied by that paycheck.

Your language includes the phrase “reposition resources onto the next front” which is language drawn from military operations. If radical movements were highly centralized and highly hierarchical, then this kind of language might make sense. But, instead, radical politics tend to be extremely decentralized. This decentralization no doubt plays a role in the frequent fractures that appear.

There were raidcial feminists in the 60s and 70s who were promoting a socialist form of economics. How were they suppose to reconcile their politics to the celebration of success based on merit?

I’ve been to certain communes here in America (TwinOaks in Virginia, for instance) where this still comes up as an issue. Celebrating the success people can acheive based on their talents is tough to reconcile with the ideal of keeping everyone in perfect equality. Even when you have very smart people forcsed on this issue for a major part of their life (as you have at TwinOaks), one finds that tension, rather than resolution, is the norm. My impression (though of course I could be wrong) is that is nearly impossible to reconcile communitarian impulses with a strong committment to economic equality for all.

Of course, one could dismiss the concerns of those radical feminists who subscribed to socialist politics, but in other threads, you (Amanda Marcotte) have described your politics as socialist, so I assume these are concerns that you take seriously.

Let’s assume for a moment that some of the radical feminists of the 60s were also loyal to socialist politics (a few them clearly were, explicitly). How do you build a politics that both celebrates people who succeed on the mertis, but also remains faithful to socialis ideals?

I’ve been to communes in America (TwinOaks, in Virginia, for instance) where this still comes up as an issue, from time to time. My impression is, even when you’ve very smart people working on this issue full-time (as you do at Twin Oaks), it’s still quite hard to reconcile communitarian impulses with the celebration of promotion based on merit.

I had a brief but powerful and deep involvement with the women’s movement in the early 1970’s when I was working for a “radical feminist” women’s center in San Diego as a Vista volunteer (the old domestic peace corps).

You’re right, I think, that we accomplished so much despite the in-fighting because there was so much to be accomplished. And, in hindsight, the ground we broke seems more or less inevitable (though it certainly didn’t seem so at the time).

In starting our own battered women’s shelter, some women argued that providing social services was anti-revolutionary (imagine saying THAT with a straight face today) because it would retard the class struggle that would (they hoped) result in a working class uprising.

To those truly “radical” feminists, groups like the National Organization of Women were traitors, looking to obtain as big and as unfair a share of the patriarchal pie as their (presumed) husbands had.

Still, the women who worked for little to nothing in those days on behalf of women’s rights accomplished quite a lot. Despite opposition from the few, we opened the battered women’s shelter AND a women’s credit union AND originated and implemented a Skilled Trades Readiness Training Program to assist women’s entry into the skilled trades, not to mention securing for women for the first time since WWII jobs at one of San Diego’s then-largest employer, National Steel and Shipbuilding. We ran consciousness raising groups and study groups and a women’s newspaper. We provided free employment services and were aligned with a “free” school (where my roommate taught).

Though full civil rights for all opposed groups (notably the GLBT) have not yet been accomplished, civil rights and free speech were the boomers’ great accomplishments. Though we must continue that work and remain vigilant, I see the current young adult generation’s great social project as global rather than local.

This generation has the enormously difficult task of addressing in a meaningful way the criminally unequal distribution of economic resources between the “first” and the “third” worlds; the taking of responsiblity for “our” contribution to those disparities; and, maybe most importantly, our finding a way to halt and then remedy the damage we have done to the environment.

These leaps forward will be more difficult and perhaps more profound that finding a way to admit that women, too, could be doctors and lawyers and machine fitters and welders and plumbers.

We just flagelate ourselves over it while the Right celebrates their Darwinian processes.

If you’re going to engage in racism, you might as well try for a Grand Unified Theory of stupid bigotry.

Did you know the Elders of Zion are responsible for rap music?

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roula
December 10, 2007 at 4:29 pm

rob- i don’t want to take things really OT but wanted to add a couple more things. would you mind if i got your email address?

rob_to_4@yahoo.com