Jim:
> As I've said several times I see the real, empirical, world is a
> combination of various social institutions -- including those of
patriarchy
> and ethnic domination, along with capitalism. It's a "complex social
> formation dominated by capitalism."
The mischief is in the word "dominated." It is used to give
"capitalism" what amounts to sole historical agency *as a source of
change.*
> Among other things, while patriarchy and ethnic domination are totally
> obnoxious, they are very conservative systems of domination.
"conservative" is pure assertion -- _a priori_ reductionism.
> They don't
> expand, metastasize, the way capitalism tends to do.
Look at Safa on the DR, Kandiyoti on Turkey, Ong on Malaysia, even
Hochschild on the US ... you can almost pick at random from the
ethnographically-informed research of the last two decades on gender all
over the world. Gender systems contain important capacities for change
and show large local and historical variety.
The sorting out of separate "systems of domination" also needs to be
done with some care lest it suggest that each "system" is somehow
free-standing.
> It's a simpler process
> of the privileged (males, whites, etc.) struggling to preserve their
> privileges or to return to the "good old days."
And how do we know it's simpler? The stuff about ancient privileges is,
typically, ideology. We know for example that racism is modern.
You've already told us
http://csf.Colorado.EDU/mail/pen-l/2000III/msg02322.html
that you don't read the literature on gender, Jim. Do you read the
literature on race? Suppose someone who admitted not having read the
literature on class asserted that class was "simpler" and "essentially
conservative."
> I admit to seeing capitalism as real ("having ontic status"),
The question was *what* ontic status it has -- what is meant by real?
> which means
> that (1) the theory of capitalism necessary to saying that it exists
makes
> logical sense and (2) it fits the empirical data as far as I can tell.
How
> is capitalism unreal?
Capitalist relations are perfectly real, as are capitalist firms. But
note even in the quote above there is a fateful slippage between the
properties of a model and the properties of the thing modelled.
Neoclassical micro also makes logical sense and fits some data.
> I don't see why we can't attribute "laws of motion" to capitalism,
Perhaps Marx's work on this needs to be read with a greater sense of
irony, since laws are always met with counter-tendencies that subvert
them.
> which
> make it an (unconscious) agent. Besides, capitalism isn't a "thing,"
but is
> instead a system of social relations. A social-institutional system
can
> have real effects on the world without being a planned organization.
The mischief is when we move from "effects" to theories of historical
change.
> I did not attribute omnipotence (or being "virtually all-powerful") to
> capitalism, since other societal institutions, such as patriarchy and
> ethnic domination, have the ability to resist. You'll note that I used
the
> word "tends" before "remake the world in its own image." Please don't
> misrepresent what I say.
Misrepresentation? By giving other things only the "capacity to
resist," "capitalism" becomes *the* motor of history. A juggernaut, a
metaphor you seem quite happy with. It may go faster, it may go slower,
but it goes and it is more powerful than anything put against it. This
is absolutely clear in what you have written, and in the
above-challenged assumptions about gender and race being
"conservative." The only question seems to be how long the
non-capitalism resists capitalism, but capitalism is assumed to prevail
in the end. The weasel-word "tends" does not help you here.
The identification of a single historical juggernaut, and the assigning
of everything else to the "resist" camp, is characteristic of much
discussion of "globalization," another problematic noun.
Best, Colin
