------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Nov. 29, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
U.S. NO MODEL OF WOMEN'S LIBERATION By Sue Davis It's a country in which four women are killed every day by their husbands or boyfriends. Spousal killings make up 12 percent of the society's total murders. Nine out of 10 murdered women are killed by men. Four out of five of them are murdered at home. And 50 percent of those women are murdered by a male partner. Afghanistan? No, the United States. These statistics are published in the 1993 "WAC Stats: The Facts about Women." The lie that the U.S. war against Afghanistan is being fought to free the super-oppressed women there is propaganda. Bush and Company are cynically pointing to women's oppression in an attempt to whip up widespread support for their terror bombing and mass destruction. Any war forces incredible hardships on women and children. If Bush really cared about Afghan women, he'd call off the bombing and send material aid to the 5.3 million people in the region whom, the BBC reported on Nov. 6, will need food, shelter and clothing to make it through the winter. The U.S. helped usher the Taliban into power in the first place. It was a counter-revolutionary force the CIA helped arm and train to overthrow a secular revolution that gave women newfound freedoms in Afghan society. Certainly the severe restrictions imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban were an extreme example of women being treated as private property. But women are viewed as private property in all existing class-divided societies. And women right here in the U.S. are sorely in need of genuine social and economic liberation. Women viewed as private property What explains the significantly higher rate of women killed by male partners? Noted 19th-century social historian and Karl Marx's collaborator, Frederick Engels, writing in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State," provides ample anthropological evidence that violence against women--indeed all the oppression women face--stems from their being viewed as men's private property. Engels shows that women's status as men's property has not always existed. There was equality between men and women during the long epoch of early human history in which societies were communal and people labored in cooperation in order to survive. These social systems were not ruled by men, as today's class-riven societies are. The sexes lived in equality and blood descent was traced through women, who enjoyed great respect for their role in society. But human cooperative labor became more efficient and a surplus developed due to the domestication of animals and the growth of agriculture. This surplus accumulated in the areas of labor that were a predominantly male sphere. As men's economic role became greater than women's, men began to subjugate women in what Engels called "the historic defeat of the female sex." The only way to end women's oppression and domestic violence is to end all forms of large-scale private ownership. It is the dog-eat-dog impetus for even greater profits that drives the capitalist economic system to expand its grip on the peoples and markets of the world. And that's why the women and men of Afghanistan, the Middle East and Central Asia are targets of the Pentagon. Ending private property would eliminate the impetus to wage imperialist war. But it will take a mighty social revolution to win that ultimate peace in society that will find its reflection in all interpersonal relationships--including those between men and women. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
