Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: Re: Class and other social divisions
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 10:32:51 -0600


Aside from enjoying the other responses, I just want to toss out an idea
that is contained in a book called The Sexual Contract, by Carol Pateman.
(Yes, that's a recommendation of the book, to which I cannot do justice.)

Her basic idea is that patriarchal relations in pre-capitalist society had a
meaning by which there were 'patriarchs' who had access to women in a way
that matched their place within the social relations.  The father was
patriarch of the family and the sons and sons of sons were subordinated to
the patriarch.  In the manner, the feudal lord had patriarchal right over
all women in the manner, hence relations such as the right of the first
night.

Capital means a transformation of those patriarchal relations.  That
hierarchy is broken down so that traditional patriarchal society no longer
appears.  However, a new kind of patriarchy comes into being.  Basically, in
a world where all men are equal (per the social contract, as Pateman is
critiquing the social contract theorists), all men are equally patriarchs
over each and every woman.  A kind of competitive, individualist patriarchy
comes into being, in which patriarchal right is built into the social
contract as EVERY MAN'S right.  A novel kind of equality and a novel kind of
patriarchy.

As I said, I am not doing this argument real justice, but I think it bears
serious consideration.  And it also happens to be what I have in mind when I
think of capitalist patriarchy.  For me, it is a significantly different set
of social relations from previous forms of patriarchy, where patriarchy
means nothing more than social relations which involves the systematic
oppression of women, but where the specific form of those social relations
finds their concrete expression in the historically specific social setting.

Just a thought.

Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2002 11:17 AM
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: Class and other social divisions


>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cwright
> Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Class and other social divisions
>
>
> I will not enter into most of the questions raised in this
> thread here. But one thing I want to comment.  While
> popular among many, I find it a contradiction of terms
> to refer to the, in capitalist terms, most advanced
> comtemporary societies   that is the most commodified
>  as patriarchical. That is precisely what they (mostly,
> and increasingly) are not . Which is not to say that
> particular gender specific forms of oppression and
> exploitation have disappeared, nor that traits and
> mentalities from an inherited pre-captiast patriarchical
> legacy has wholly been overcome. But it would be
> more correct to say that for instance violence within
> families in the most commodified regions today are
> related to the erosion of patriarchical relations than
> the other way around. Though the two aspects, the
> old and the new, tend to both blend into and oppose
> each other.
>
> Harald
>
>
>
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---