wrote this today in a comment to a post on Facebook discussion group WOMAN'S WORK GOES ON
Woman's Work Goes On
Admin
I'm getting hunches that tell me Patriarchy and White Supremacy are dying.
The objective material base of human societies -- the relationships between humans essential to produce the goods and services necessary for humans to live and reproduce, -- has changed.
I'd be prowling the stacks of some university library in a cold city for something I just googled in a few seconds from my comfortable couch, if it hadn't. And the material base has changed for everyone no matter how far "off the grid" they live, as well as, if not as much as, for those writing algorithms and initial public offers in Palo Alto. And this all well underway before Covid and zoom.
Some laws to smooth those changes, to preserve "stability" (ie the old order) and reserve the fruits of the changes to a few of the old and some of the new, have already changed too.
"Established law" enforces the customs, traditions, beliefs, MORALS,[shoulds and shouldn'ts, sins and virtues], that at every stage of history evolve (but never resolve the primary class contradictions) to facilitate the ruling class ruling the rest of us and ruling out the fruits that the rest of us let them rule us to produce. Note my parenthetical. Laws enforce beliefs that evolve to facilitate the ruling class ruling the ruled class. The laws never resolve the basic material contradiction between the rulers and the ruled. That's why laws have to be enforced. Beliefs about what is good, best for all, that appease our unease, our sense of injustice, they evolve. Beliefs evolve to cure what rulers recognize as our dis-ease. Beliefs overcome contradictions. Beliefs belie the lies they be, the lies they leave us believing to live with the contradictions we cannot overcome rationally nor materially. Of course beliefs don't rationally nor materially overcome contradictions, but beliefs like Joseph's that his fiance raped by the centurion gave birth to the son of the Lord who sent wise men to lay their treasures at his feet certainly made it easier to render unto Caesar, and not just for that Mary's husband and first born.
Laws established in the US since 1619 rewarded enough White European males enough, by granting them legal authority over all women and all non White European men, for the money we use to exchange goods and services, to be the "world reserve currency" throughout the 20th century.
Laws removing the power of all white men over all women and Black men were changed for US between 1954 (Brown v Topeka) and 1973 (Roe v Wade). This expanded the supply of US labor and the rate of profit from financing, as the rate of profit from established, capital intensive highly unionized industries like steel and auto declined and capital shifted to labor intensive unorganized industries like textiles, electronics and financial packaging which became a commodity producing industry in itself.
But the MORALS [the beliefs -- about what is 'natural,' what is the 'true' certain, unchanging nature of humans -- that the old laws enforced, are conserved by almost half the population of US, 80 -95% of which are WE (white european).
Some conserving the old morals are as adept at controlling the new technologies as those progressing toward new ones. Initially mostly old white men reaped the king's portion of the leaps in productivity and profitability from computerization and from hiring Blacks and women to keep labor costs down.
But now plenty of white women and Black women and men are benefitting too. And we're the ones who chafe against the old attitudes and beliefs -- patriarchy and white supremacy -- the most.
I think the onus/honor of figuring out, articulating, persuading others to embrace a new morality that fits the new productive forces to benefit the most humans the most, falls on the major beneficiaries.
It is not enough for us to keep exposing the evils of rich old white men. We have to start providing models and a culture that goes beyond, way beyond, "alternative cultures" we sniffed around in the late -60s and the ersatz cultures the people designing computer games inspired by avatars. Interest in "transitioning from one sex to another raises some of the right questions, but doesn't answer them.
Let me close and hopefully begin discussion by saying I know a lot of men who aren't gay nor interested in transitioning who complain that women drop them when they find out they [the men]don't make as much money as they [the women] do. These men are not Trumpeters. But they are men Trumpeters pitch to.
