Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Look, I agree it's no bowl of cherries. But there is a tendency among
> Western liberals and leftists to romanticize peasant life.
Just a few thoughts on this thread.
There isn't much peasant life left anymore anywhere. Is that a good
thing? After the rev. in
Vietnam there was little traditional,subsistence farming and more
collective farms and co-operatives set up by the state and regional
cadre committees. Subsistence farming is going the way of the dinosaur
with farmworkers becoming proletarianized and massive rural-urban
migration. The peasantry now
exists in the slums and sidewalks of major cities where 75% of the pop
lives. The problem is that
as capitalism dissolves subsistence farming (or more accurately as
peasants are forced off their land at gunpoint) it doesn't provide jobs
for those thrown off the land. A pseudo-metamorphesis. Hence Shining
Path, FARC etc.
If capitalism is such a liberating force why is there such fierce
resistance to it? Fear of the unknown? Or is just peasant men fearing
that their women will get uppity once they have capitalism? Is the
destruction of the peasantry a good thing.If people want to live the
life of subsistence farming then I think they should be able to. Not
everyone likes urban areas.
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.
There's also a tendency for some to look down at people who live in
rural areas, ignoring the seminal role that agriculture plays in the
economy of a place like Vietnam. A classic Maoist tactic that works is
to surround and starve out the cities. If the rice paddies lose their
best hands to the factories, productivity will decline and the country
will have to use the export earnings to import food. Patriarchy is
everywhere, it is not strictly a rural phenomenon.So-called 'honor
killings' are legal in some countries e.g. Colombia.The export/assembly
sector is also gendered
with young women doing the dirty jobs like sitting at a sewing machine
for 12 hours, 6 days a week. The young men hold the whips or otherwise
get the better jobs like the Ford,GM, Toyota assembly plants in,say,
Chihuahua or Hermosillo. The patriarchy of the rural areas is reproduced
in the urban context.The young factory employees do not make enough
money for rural-urban migration to
make much of a difference to them or to partake in what an urban area
has to offer (whatever that is, Mcdonalds, nightclubs, movie theaters.)
A lot of young people migrate to the cities to earn money to support
family in the rural areas and sometimes move back. This is rooted in the
crisis in the
countryside.
> 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.
I've been Chiapas a few times and also to the Maquila belt in the North
and that is an extreme case. Conditions differ from place to place and
from generation to generation and ultimately from family to family.
Indigenous people in Chiapas were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks
in San Cristobal until the 1970's.
> They worked nonstop from dawn 'til dusk.
That's true for most everyone. That women do the majority of the work
gives
them certain power and independence over the men. In some places ( I
think in a West African country) women have even gone on strike against
the men.
You can imagine how working
> in an electronics plant up north might hold some allure.
>
Maybe. The real allure is the USA. The turnover rate in the Maquilas is
very high, most don't stick
with it that long. There are many barriers to organizing there not least
the severe repression meted out to those who try it. The patriarchal
family and the church play a role in the conservatism too.
> 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.
>
If its true that capitalism breaks all fast fixed relations and all that
solid melts into air, then (re-)introducing wage labor into the
countryside would improve gender relations right? That has been what's
happening in Vietnam as land is being privatized (in a very corrupt
fashion). Has it improved the gender relations? I don't know. It hasn't
helped much in other places. Further,the conditions that led to the
initial wars in Vietnam are being
reproduced.
Sam Pawlett
