wait a minnute! okey.. I will be kind.. Louis said what needs to be said, but let me reiterate. Doug, first, I am a Marxist feminist and I COMDEMNED in my post both local and foreign capitalists who exploit women. excuse me, but you have provided no empirical evidence, besides your friend's subjective experience, showing that women who work in Nike are happy with their lives. As the article suggests, women are BEATEN by Nike manegers. Do you think that they are still content with what they do? Criticizing this brutality has nothing to do with with feeling sympathy with peasent life or rice fields. Patriarchy in those areas is fostered by western powers too, not only by local patriarchs. Third world patriachy is a COMBINATION of both: "traditional" and "modern", "particular and "universal", "modernity" and "modesty", "local" and "global"..it is this strange dialectics of patriachy that makes women's lives more miserable and vulnarable there (See Spivak on this issue). You have the privilige of not having the same problems here, so you can not understand, especially as a man. moreover, western men are just as patriachal as those men over there; just the COVER is different; so let's not glorify your species; don't you see the indicators of battered women in the US? second, who romantized peasent life? I think your point is not quite relevant to the subject matter of the discussion. To my understanding, Micheal's point was about sweathops and sucking realities of minimum wage in third world countries. What he meant was that these people do not even make a living wage,and their situation is not getting enormously better as we think it is. This is self-evident if we look at sheer stats. so what is the point about peasentry? or priviliged Turkish general's daughter Zeynep? third, you talk about Latin America and oppression there.. Did you look at the minimum wages I sent to the list? Mine ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 11:31:16 -0400 From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:18678] contradictions of capitalism Michael Perelman wrote: >Doug, what you say bears some resemblance to the reports that people >gave about >the girls who worked in the Lowell textile mills. They were >younger, single and >had no responsibilities. The horror stories that I hear relate to the young >girls that have responsibilities, especially children. > >This version however does not necessarily mean that Brad is correct when he >talks about a standard of living three times higher than that of the >grandparents. Look, I agree it's no bowl of cherries. But there is a tendency among Western liberals and leftists to romanticize peasant life. My friend who was stationed in Vietnam pointed out just how awfully gendered farm work is there - women do a disproportionate share of the work, and the really crappy jobs (chasing and trapping rats - the four-legged kind - was one she mentioned) are reserved for them. It's too bad that what may look like a step up for them enriches a pig like Phil Knight. A year or so ago I talked with an American who'd been trying to do some union organizing in the Mexican maquiladoras. He said that the workers did not feel anywhere near as exploited as we think they should feel (and as they objectively are), which made organizing extremely difficult. No doubt there are other stories lurking in Nexis which can be deployed to refute this, but I'd say this is very complex and contradictory stuff. Some folks may remember Zeynep, the renegade daughter of a Turkish general, from the old Spoons Marxism list. Zeynep made a long visit to Chiapas back in 1996, I think. She said the women weren't allowed to speak if there were men present unless they were first spoken to. They worked nonstop from dawn 'til dusk. You can imagine how working in an electronics plant up north might hold some allure. And to anyone who might feel inclined to call me an apologist for imperialism, I'd say that this is a pretty classically Marxist view of capitalism. Doug
