Gar writes: >I don't know if this is true. If class, race, and gender can all be >traced to some single root cause then we could use this root cause as >base and the others as superstructure. I don't think anyone attributes race, class, and gender to the same "root cause." Even Engels, in his book on the family didn't do so. In "the German Ideology," Marx and Engels saw the family (with its enslavement of women) as preceding capitalism in history. Etc. (_Who_ is it that engages in such reductionism? I think that sometimes "crude Marxism" can be as much as a strawMarx as PoMo often is.) I think the only reason one can see capitalism as the "root cause" of other oppressive institutions is dynamic. Like a virus, capitalism continually spreads, attacking preexisting institutions like racism and patriarchy and either destroying them or, perhaps more likely, transforming them in a way that fits its functioning. These institutions are conservative, rather than being aggressively dynamic like capitalism. When attacked, the internal balance of racism and patriarchy between the dominated and the dominant is upset. In the 1940s and 1950s, the racist domination of blacks by whites in the US was undermined by economic developments (including WW2). This unleashed the civil rights movement, which threatened the domination of the alliance of white racists and capitalists. The movement was able to win important reforms, but there have also been reverses as the capitalist/racist alliance struck back. Racist institutions can help preserve the stability of capitalism (by dividing an conquering workers) at the same time that capitalism can help preserve the stability of racism (by splitting minority groups among classes). Of course, any "equilibrium" attained is merely transitory, as capitalism, with its dynamic of accumulate-to-compete and compete-to-accumulate disrupts even its own status quo. There's a somewhat parallel analysis of patriarchy/capital relations, but I lack the time to explain it. Anyway, I'll leave further commentary to Angela. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
