Jim D. says:
>Yoshie writes:
>>What do you mean by "third worldist"? You mean that Kanth's
>>alternative is akin to, say, Maria Mies & Vandana Shiva's?
>
>I can't comment on the opinions of the latter authors, since I
>haven't had the time to read their works. In fact, I can't talk
>about "third worldism" in general, since there's a lot of variety in
>that school. (I have a large soft spot for Samir Amin.) But Kanth
>takes a reasonable critique of Eurocentrism and the Enlightenment
>and instead of trying to find if there's anything valid in those
>ideologies (such as that capitalism did in fact start its world-wide
>rampage in Europe), simply turns Eurocentrism and the Enlightenment
>upside down to praise Third-World village culture (in a very
>abstract way) and anti-Enlightenment thinking. He also praises
>feminism, but there don't seem to be any real-world women in the
>book.
>
>Here's a couple of quotes from Kanth, from my recent [Spring 2000]
>review of his book in SCIENCE & SOCIETY:
>
>He rejects the "'law and order' ... fetish of the west" and the
>"constitutional fetish," preferring instead the "'creative anarchy'
>visible perhaps in the congenial workings of an Indian bazaar, or
>ordinary street traffic in Rome."
>
>He rejects Marx's assertion that there exists an "idiocy of rural
>life": "I have never met, despite extensive travels amongst the
>peasantry of many continents, a village idiot; but the robotized
>cretins of industry are almost impossible to avoid no matter where
>you travel" in the rich world. (This misses Marx's point, BTW.)
In that case, Kanth's ideas are similar to Mies & Shiva's, except
that the latter exalt women's "privileged access to nature" rooted in
subsistence agriculture, instead of "creative anarchy" in "an Indian
bazaar" or "street traffic in Rome" a la Kanth. In both cases,
"real-world women" (with class, caste, and other differences among
them) disappear from analysis, while women's lives outside the
context of wage labor become inordinately idealized & romanticized.
Those who reject the modernization theory & the Enlightenment
_without_ embracing Marxism & advocating socialist modernization
ironically tend to replicate the Enlightenment conflation of Woman
with Nature and to minimize gender inequality & oppression that exist
in ways of life not fully incorporated in wage labor (they only
notice sexism under capitalism).
Michael Perelman writes:
***** ...In the case of the Lowell [Massachusetts] mills, young
girls who enjoyed little independence within traditional patriarchal
society were often enthusiastic about the opportunity to work in the
mills. Besides being free of parental restrictions, they had the
prospect of being able to have control of their own earnings. One
woman, recalling her youthful labors in an early nineteenth century
textile mill in Lowell, explained:
For hitherto woman had always been a money-saving, rather than a
money-earning, member of the community, and her labor could command
but a small return. If she worked out as a servant, or help, wages
were from fifty cents to one dollar a week; if she went from house to
house by the day to spin and weave, or as a tailoress, she could get
by seventy-five cents a week and her meals. As a teacher her
services were not in demand, and nearly all the arts, the professions
and even the trades and industries were closed to her. (Harriet H.
Robinson, _Loom and Spindle, or Life among the Early Mill Girls_,
Kailua, Hawaii: Pacifica Press, 1976 [originally published in 1898]).
Unfortunately, few employers were either able or willing to incur the
expense of creating attractive opportunities for workers [as Robert
Owen tried to do].... (Michael Perelman, _The Invention of
Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of
Primitive Accumulation_, Durham: Duke UP, 2000, p. 94) *****
This is the aspect of working-class women's lives -- wage labor as a
way of creating space for resistance to old patriarchal ways --
completely ignored in non- or anti-Marxist criticisms of capitalism &
the Enlightenment, including even those that profess to be "feminist"
in some sense.
Yoshie
