Spain and beyond
The BBC reporting on "the feminist strike in Spain": The 8 March Commission is behind the strike. Its manifesto calls for "a society free of sexist oppression, exploitation and violence" and says: "We do not accept worse working conditions, nor being paid less than men for the same work.
Yes, this opens possibilities, but
1. The socialist origins of Women's Day (Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin) have be rediscovered.
2. The neoliberal capitalism has coopted and contained the emanciptaory movement.
3. Even adjectives like "radical" and "revolutionary" have been emptied of their meanings.
4. There should be no illusion that the Beyonces, the Jolies, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Mays, and the marketing of Malala, or the colouring of the elite, could be part of a real change to "end sexist oppression, exploitation and violence". They have been perpetuating the commodification of women.
5. The fundamental change has to come in the socio-economic structure of ownership and power.
6. There has been a criminal silence towards what women in Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, Africa, etc have been subjected to. There has been selective solidarity, and even tacit and passive support of the "secular" Al-assad regime. There has been complicity of most Western women when they do nothing when a dictator or an autocrat visits Washington, Paris or London, for example.
7. The "feminist" movement has to be part of a class and race movement of the oppressed, and global. The fact is that the neoliberal regimes of recognition have also been neoliberal regimes of fragmentation; a successful hegemonic power of fragmenting social movements.
I am not optimistic, though. Neoliberal capitalism is still entrenched, and has emerged largely unschathed from the crisis and the tide, for now, is with the far-right.
The BBC reporting on "the feminist strike in Spain": The 8 March Commission is behind the strike. Its manifesto calls for "a society free of sexist oppression, exploitation and violence" and says: "We do not accept worse working conditions, nor being paid less than men for the same work.
Yes, this opens possibilities, but
1. The socialist origins of Women's Day (Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin) have be rediscovered.
2. The neoliberal capitalism has coopted and contained the emanciptaory movement.
3. Even adjectives like "radical" and "revolutionary" have been emptied of their meanings.
4. There should be no illusion that the Beyonces, the Jolies, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Mays, and the marketing of Malala, or the colouring of the elite, could be part of a real change to "end sexist oppression, exploitation and violence". They have been perpetuating the commodification of women.
5. The fundamental change has to come in the socio-economic structure of ownership and power.
6. There has been a criminal silence towards what women in Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, Africa, etc have been subjected to. There has been selective solidarity, and even tacit and passive support of the "secular" Al-assad regime. There has been complicity of most Western women when they do nothing when a dictator or an autocrat visits Washington, Paris or London, for example.
7. The "feminist" movement has to be part of a class and race movement of the oppressed, and global. The fact is that the neoliberal regimes of recognition have also been neoliberal regimes of fragmentation; a successful hegemonic power of fragmenting social movements.
I am not optimistic, though. Neoliberal capitalism is still entrenched, and has emerged largely unschathed from the crisis and the tide, for now, is with the far-right.
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