Friday, April 29, 2011

Class politics and feminism

I have been thinking about this for awhile. Does feminism go with socialism? Many claim that feminism is socialism, or at least marxist. This seems absurd to me.

So I suppose my question is if one does not apply a combination of class politics and feminism (or just class politics) to the world how can one get a reasonable idea of what is happening?

Hillary clinton being in office has nothing to do with the lives of the majority of women, this is not an empowering thing. How can we look to the oprah winfreys and the ellen degeneres' as signs of liberation for women and homosexuals, when the stark reality is that the experiences of these women will not be and cannot be the experience of most.

How can this be viewed under the lens of "the glass ceiling has been smashed! Just look at the aussie pm, she is female!" and be accurate? Do these very few women who end up in positions of power really indicate anything at all about the changing world of gender politics?

5 comments:

  1. There is the short term issue of gender balance in power structures of politics, (wide angle lens/helicopter view) but there is also the idea of individual liberty and empowerment (narrow lens/personal view).

    Q. If one does not apply a combination of class politics and feminism (or just class politics) to the world how can one get a reasonable idea of what is happening?

    A. What you describe is in a sense what Karl Marx grappled with a long time ago. But if you go back further to Plato and "The Republic" he introduces a couple of ideas - first that governments swing between control and lack of control. They oscillate between fascism and communism. Socialism is somewhere in the middle. And if you read Lysistrata, a 2500 year old sex comedy, you see that sex and gender politics usually have other associated issues.

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  2. Sorry mate but I disagree with how you define communism and socialism. In the context of marxism, socialism is the manner in which to get to communism (eg revolutionary socialism etc) communism is the economic system that would come out of socialism. Socialism is not some kind of middle ground between fascism and communism at all. The middle of those two things would be called "moderate politics" as one is extreme left and one is extreme right.

    Also I am unsure if you answered the question?

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  3. You disagree that fascism and communism are conditions which provide the widest societal controls?

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  4. would depend what you mean by that. It is a very vague assertion.

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  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

    simple wiki article that explains how fascism is extreme right.

    Can source you some more stuff if you don't find wiki compelling.

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