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A sore lack on almost any political discussion list, no less than in the
culture generally and that includes most of the the left, is that there
is neither the prominent presence of women in Marxist discussion groups
(exceptions are rare and certainly no quorum) nor discussion of the
problem of patriarchy/matriarchy. Discussion of patriarchy/matriarchy,
and corresponding action, have periodically come and gone as prominent
issues, but no one really even pretends to have a handle on it,
especially one that reaches understanding that leads to any path to
resolution; and lacking a vision of change, that all-important matter
slips from the glaring view it cries out for. But one thing's sure: talk
about socialism or preserving what remains of our natural surroundings
is, as we should know talk, just that, without a massive overturning of
male dominance. It's recessive and endemic and in major denial. Speaking
for myself, I certainly have made major mistakes in my life mainly
stemming from the fact that I was conditioned to the right to "man's
estate," male dominance in the family and everywhere else as a dog-given
right. All I've been able to do about that is try to learn what in
hell's going on. (By the way, rather than use he or she or person or
they in referring to both genders at once, does anyone use s/he?)
When I think of who among current thinkers that I've read is approaching
this issue in any systematic, fruitful way a few books occur to me. I
know there are others, Melinda Cooper and Nancy Fraser come to mind, but
one I learned much from is Chris Knight's fascinating "Blood Relations"
and another is Sylvia Frederici's equally fascinating "Caliban and the
Witch." Both authors are Marxists. Both books are by now probably
available online. The former book has to do, among other topics, with
coordination of menstrual cycles and the ancient matriarchal custom and
mythology built around variations on "no food, no sex," and by
implication current relevance. The latter tells the story of witches and
witchcraft; if I could pin it, it's about persecution of uppity or
protesting women, and the function in nascent capitalism of witch hunts
and trials and burnings in sustaining and enhancing male dominance and
corresponding furtherance of the growth of capital accumulation - and
here too the perduring relevance of that and its extensions. Needless to
say, they're not getting the attention they deserve, they share relative
obscurity, and that has to be a function of major denial, which stands
always in the way of change.
Another, a major 600-page book just published on the history and
etiology of matriarchy, and an exhaustive survey of the relevant
literature from the fields of human behavior and archeology, is
psychoanalyst Mario Rendon's "Why War?" (2018 NY: International
Psychoanalytic Books). Dr. Rendon, a native of Colombia, had a practice
for about 40 years in Manhattan, is listed on staff at Albert Einstein
College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, and
he was a Fellow and Trustee of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis.
He is now retired and living in Connecticut. I have the privilege of
having been in a discussion group for the past 6 or 7 years with Mario,
and we are currently about 400 pages through his book. Dr. Rendon is a
rare person, unassuming and very reticent about his impressive
accomplishments. He presented at the Left Forum on Istvan Meszaros. I
suspect that this book will languish in the prevailing culture as well,
even more so since it seems to be primarily addressed to the
male-dominated and decidedly un-Marxist psychoanalytic and psychiatric
communities. Mario has given me permission to send the url of the online
galley copyto anyone interested.
From the publisher's blurb:
“Thus God and Nature link’d the gen’ral frame, And bade Self-love and
Social be the same.”
Pope [i]
The Argument of Pope could be the argument of this book. It is
remarkable that he wrote it in 1733 foretelling so many modern themes.
That the total set of interrelations of the universe must include
society (Hegel), that everything stands in relationship to everything
else (Darwin), that happiness and love are reciprocal (Freud), that
reason is a continuation of instinct (Darwin), that instinct produces
social institutions (Veblen), that patriarchy had a historical origin as
did religion, and that therefore unlike material imperatives they are
reversible (Morgan, Meszaros), that governments based on love and those
based on fear are antipodes (Marx), and that true self-love results in
public good (Adam Smith). These are all themes of this book, based on
the Spinozist principle that God and Nature are one, and therefore God
is only the good sense of nature, its awesome intelligence of which
humanity partakes. This shows how old the fundamental ideas of this book
are. Our lack of action is not due to lack of ideas.
The title of the book expresses its main thesis. Freud got close but
answering the question but his ideology blurred his vision to the
dialectical nature of instinct, to the effect that altruism, the
phenomenon that so productively puzzled Darwin, is his Eros, the
feminine instinct. Thanatos its opposite unrestrained manifests itself
in constant war today. This is based in the Freud-Einstein
correspondence after, in 1931, the Institute for Intellectual
Cooperation invited Einstein to a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas
about politics and peace with a thinker of his choosing. Einstein chose
Freud and asked hum Why War? within the parameters of might and right
that Freud, interestingly, substituted for violence and right. Einstein
was hoping for a psychological explanation and Freud answered only
partially and rather hopelessly through his instinctual construct of -
Thanatos but rather unilaterally and mechanically.[ii] Freud did not see
his contradiction: that his whole theory of culture was based on
sublimation and therefore the question why is war an exception to
sublimation? This book endeavors to answer this question by placing
history in the psychoanalytic couch in the first part, by interpreting
its trauma that repressed altruism. A deeply traumatized animal species,
we ourselves inflicted the trauma when we abandoned the morality of
evolution,[iii] and compromised our inherent moral uprightness.
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