No Woman, No Revolution, Part 8
Lindsey German in 2009
Patriarchy
In South Africa, in 2012,
“Patriarchy” theory is orthodox. It is politically correct, and government
ministers and trade union leaders feel free to denounce patriarchy without fear
of contradiction.
Patriarchy doctrine says that
men have an innate prejudice against women that causes them to treat women
badly. This contradicts the other principal orthodoxy related to women, which
is Gender theory.
To say that men have an
innate prejudice is to attribute to men a characteristic that is not
biological. Hence, patriarchy doctrine is prejudice. It is gender bias.
Patriarchy doctrine is sexism.
Lindsey German is a renowned
leader of the peace movement in Britain. She is the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, an alliance
that involves the Communist Party of Britain as well as Lindsey German’s former
organisation (she has now resigned from it), the Socialist Workers’ Party.
Lindsey German rejected the
theory of patriarchy more than 30 years ago.
The article attached and
linked below is from 1981 but it is not out of date. It will not offend all
supporters of patriarchy-theory, because, as German points out, there are many
different definitions of the word. But it will upset some, if they read it.
German focuses on the kind of
patriarchy-theory that holds that all men benefit from the oppression of all
women, where this is taken as a natural, or given, state of affairs.
Lindsey German sets
quotations from Karl Marx against these ideas to show that they are not
compatible with history.
She shows how the modern
conditions of women were not inevitable but arose in the circumstances of
capitalism.
“I would
argue therefore that not only do men not benefit from women’s work in the
family (rather the capitalist system as a whole benefits), but also that it is
not true that men and capital are conspiring to stop women having access to
economic production,” says German.
“The question
the theorists of patriarchy have to answer is this – if capital and men are
indeed in alliance why are women not being thrown out of work and replaced by
unemployed miners, steelworkers and dockers?” asks German.
German concludes: “Theories
of patriarchy are not in fact theories of women’s liberation. Instead of
starting with an assessment of the material position of women in capitalist
society, they start with crude biological assessments of the positions of men
and women. They point no way forward for women’s liberation.”
...and asks: “Why
then have they become so popular?”
She points out that
patriarchy-theory “demands theoretical
correctness from the few while accepting inaction by the many.” This is
exactly the situation in South Africa today, more than 30 years after German
wrote her essay.
In the end, only the
abolition of class division can do away with the oppression of and
discrimination against women.
Those women who would rather
not think about class, are the ones who make patriarchy-theory popular.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Theories of Patriarchy,
Lindsey German, 1981.
