You are on page 1of 42

Dissecting the Capitalist Patriarchy

(or Patriarchal capitalism?)

By Conori and Pechschwefel


Contact:
conori-rise@riseup.net
1. Pre-capitalist age.
Establishing the basic Capitalist Power structure:
the birth of sex, race and class oppression
● societies in the world: most patriarchal (patriarchal
domination). Some of them with more equality
between sexes. Different kinds of patriarchy
● agrarian societies:
– Public and private sphere not completelly separate
– usually women with more power: reproduction: women
decide how many people are need work to the collectivity
– in many societies the right to the earth was stablished
using matricentric lineages.
Separation between Women exhiled in
public and private the private sphere
sphere
Women's
More centralized power Men dominate autonomy
(state) and juristic public sphere
structure: (public and nature
sphere)
1.1. Antique age
● Greece (many islands)→intensive exchange of
goods→developing of market →stablishment of
coinage (monetarian system) → public sphere
● Regulamentations → Burocracy and state law
● Public sphere → men (rethorical, rational)
● Private sphere → women (sensual, emotional)
● Rationality (men's world)→ status in trade :
dialetics, formal logics
1.2. Medieval age (feudalism)
(cent. V - XV)
● semi matriarchals remnants from the germanic folks but
still women subordinate to husbands or fathers (greek
influence) →paradoxal situation of medieval women
● serfdom: "family" (heteroconcept) was the center of
agricultural and artisan production
● sourcery and witchcraft were not seem as bad
● Traditional healing and midwife work were womens work.
● Catholic Church → perserved negative image of women
and conserved the idea that women should stay out of
public sphere
● Riots: against fees, against working in the land of
the lord, against repression.
● enclosure of the common land → private property
is born.
● Women were more affected → women taking
part/or leading riots.
● Many people went to cities.
● Searching for jobs → unemployment and hunger
→ State was born.
● Women tried to do handcraft work → male artisans
organisations against women's work.
● Women's unemployment → prostitution increasing
2. Transition to Capitalism:
witch hunt, colonialism and slavory system
2.1. Renassaince (cent: XIV to XVI)
● redescovery and revalorization of the antique
cultural values → christian church image of
women becomes more popular and efficiently
● production of goods and monetarian flux → new
public sphere.
● Natural science revolution → rationality and
technologies to the market → colonialism,
expansion of manufacture, find new markets and
resources
2.2 Witch hunt (cent: XV to XVIII)
● Campaign against women → control women and stop peasant riots
● Rationality of the Bourgeois man x the mistical idea of female
witches close to nature
● simbolic campaign to dominate nature → resource to capitalist
production
● medical profession and male rationality x women healers and wise
women
● the burning of witches was not the last act of the "age of darkness"
but the first act of the modernization (Scholtz)
● motherhood ideal becomes the model for women in the bougeoise
class - Closure of women in private sphere
● The separation between productive and reproductive labor is
completed
2.3. Colonialism
● Exports new born mercantilist/capitalist system and
also the capitalist patriarchal system to the colonized
territories
● Institutionalized racism is born → global racist division
of labor
● Eg: In Latin america colonies → black people: slavory;
native: serfdom; white: waged labor
● Acumulation of capital to the industrial revolution: gold,
plate, resources, new resources and natural products to
capitalism
Decolonial Thought
● decolonial theory x post colonialism → not the same
● Colonialism: “classic” colonialism: phase when the
metropoles (core countries) had the direct control of the
colonies states
● Coloniality: geographical distribuction of power which
were stablished as the result of the classic colonialism and
still exists today organizing the racist division of labor
globally
● the myth of the decolonized world
● "white man point zero” → eurocentrism
Decolonial Feminism
● Is the concept of "woman" universal?
– Queer answer: “no” → based in a post-structuralist, post-
modern and essencialist speech.
– Decolonial theory: “no” → based on a materialist, marxist,
anti-racist and decolonial speech.
● Decolonial Feminism: Womens experiences are
different because of the international racist
division of labor
● bases of the capitalist oppressions (race, class, sex).
Decolonial Feminism
● Colonisation: dehumanization, objetification and feminilization
→ part of the racialization process which creates racism.
● The "women" are only white women. The racialized women are
not "women" but females (different stereotypes for racialized
women)
● “Feminization” of racialized men during colonization time →
non-rational, emotive, passive, fragile, wild.
● Racialized women → even less rational, wild, erotic,
uncontrolable.
● (Christianism) and evangelization → discussing if the racialized
people "had a soul" or not.
Dandara of Palmares: a black
warrior women who fought against
slavory in the colonial period of
Brazil
Decolonial Feminism
● imposition of the capitalist gender system to the
colonies → helped to naturalize the gender (sex
roles) → capitalist Christian patriarchy becomes
the rule
● imposition of heteronormativity in the colonies:
the occidental view of homossexuality and
lesbianism became norm.
● Mixing of races by rape and the “pocahontas
myth”
3. Capitalism of many names:
industrial capitalism, state capitalism, capitalism
of information
3.1. First industrial phase in Europe
(XVIII cent)
● Consolidation of the classes: bourgeoise x
proletarian → workers x holders of ways of
production
● high exploitation of the labor power → including
women and children of working class
● no regulation
● no insurance or safety conditions
● Consolidation of the state
● Liberal Ideology
3.2. Organizing resistance
● Marxism and anarchism → analyses of production: classes
● Workers union → workers demands directed to abstract
power (state)
● Fight against child-work
● first “feminist” wave (cent: XIX)
– Mainly bourgeois women
– Against exhilium in private sphere (right to vote, independence
and adulthood in the state)
– Internalized motherhood as natural
– Supporting female workers and abolition fighters
3.3 Capitalism counterattacks:
State Intervention and Fordism
(second industrial phase - cent: XIX - XX):
● Fordism: production more efficient → technical advance
→ no need of women and child work
● Workers rights → women back to exclusive reproduction
work (not in all classes) → decrease of exploitation level
● Bourgeouis women as the ideal in all classes: at home,
dedicating herself to the household, children and husband
● Man become the wage laborer and the bread-winner
● Reproduction and care work are innate in female nature
and acts of love
● State creates schools for the proletarian kids →
family is not anymore the educational center →
proletarian children educated to be labor power
● Invention of insurance system
● “Social peace” → Nationalism
3.4. Second Wave Feminism
● The personal is political
● gender and sexuality as social construct
● interseccionality as tools for analyzing the 3
classes system of capitalism: race, sex and class
● Separatism
● Criticism of obligatory heterossexuality and
heteronormativity
● Lesbian feminism
4. The State counterattacks again:
Neoliberalism, Post-structuralism and Identity
Politics
4.1. Neoliberalism
● Attacks worker union: class doesnt exist →
reinforcement of individuality and identity.
● Every individual is responsible for its own well
being
● Liberalism → “the supreme system”
● Fascism and comunism → bad and failed
“socialists” dictatorships
● !!!! There is no alternative !!!!!
● No other system is possible → end of history.
4.2. Neoliberalism in Feminism
(a third wave “feminism”?)
● sex revolution: prostitution, porn and
sadomasochism (bdsm)
● women is not a class
● Biological sex is social constructed (queer)
● gender is identity (queer)
● Sexuality is innate
● Identity politics
Discussion :)
● Some suggestion of questions and topic to guide
discussion:
– Do you have any criticism to the political analysis we
brought?
– How to keep feminism radical and anticapitalist in
Neoliberal times?
– How to organize women in the neoliberal era?
– How are the lesbian history connected to all this?
– Lets talk about decolonial feminism!
Addendum
Structural oppressions in
Capitalism:
● Classes of sex oppression : male x female →
productive x reproductive division of work
● Classes of race oppression: white x racialized
people → racist division of labor
● Classic marxist classes → bourgeoise x
proletarian → workers x holders of ways of
production
Addendum

Texts and Books Reference


● Der Wert ist der Mann (O valor é o Homem) - Roswitha Scholtz – available on pt (portuguese) and de
(german).
● Patriarchy and Commodity Society: Gender without the Body (2009) – Roswitha Scholtz – en (We have not
read this book yet but it is the only text from Scholtz that we found in English language. Most part of her work
is available in german or portuguese).
● Calyban and the witch - Silvia Federici – es (Espanol), pt, en…. Probably French too.
● Wages against Housework - Silvia Federici – en (maybe other languages too)
● The power of women and the subversion of the community - Mariarosa Dalla Costa & Selma James – en
(other languages?)
● Toward a decolonial Feminism - María Lugones – es, en
● Colonidad y Género - María Lugones – es, en.
● Identidades essencialistas o construcción de identidades políticas - Ochy Curiel – es
● La Nación Heterosexual – Ochy Curiel – es (maybe also in english?)
● Superando la interseccionalidad de categorias por la construcción de un proyecto político feminista radical -
Ochy Curiel – es.
● Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America - Aníbal Quijano (Peruan male author – clear exposition
and discussion of decolonial thought ideias) – en, es.
● If you have suggestions of texts and books to
us, please send us by the email in the first
page. We would love to receive suggestions.

You might also like