Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour

254 Pages·1999·9.52 MB·English

by  Maria Mies

A R I A
A
c c u m u l a t io n
W S
o n a orld cale
Women in the International
Division of Labour
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...
‘Breathtakingly hold
Maria Mies’ vision is huge: she sets out
to explain women’s exploitation
from the beginning’
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale was
first published by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street,
London NI 9JF, UK, and 165 First Avenue,
Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 07716, USA,
in 1986.
Copyright © Maria Mies, 1986.
Cover designed by Andrew Corbett.
Cover photograph by Mark Edwards.
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom
by Redwood Books, Trowbridge.
Fifth impression, 1994.
The right of Maria Mies to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
US CIP data is available from
the Library of Congress.
ISBN 0 86232 341 X Cased
ISBN 0 86232 342 8 Limp
Contents
Foreword 1
What is Feminism? 6
Where are we today? 6
Fair-weather Feminism? . 14
What is New About Feminism? Continuities and
Discontinuities 18
Continuities: Women’s Liberation - A Cultural Affair? 18
Discontinuities: Body Politics 24
Discontinuities: A New Concept of Politics 28
Discontinuities: Women’s Work 31
Concepts 35
Exploitation or Oppression/Subordination? 36
Capitalist-Patriarchy 37
Overdeveloped-Underdeveloped Societies 39
Autonomy 40
Social Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour 44
The Search for Origins Within a Feminist Perspective 44
Biased Concepts 44
Suggested Approach 47
Appropriation of Nature by Women and Men 49
Women’s/Men’s Appropriation of Their Own Bodies 52
Women’s and Men’s Object-Relation to Nature 53
Men’s Object-Relation to Nature 56
Female Productivity as the Precondition of Male
Productivity 58
The Myth of Man-the-Hunter 58
Women’s Tools, Men’s Tools 61
‘Man-the-Hunter’ under Feudalism and Capitalism 66
Colonization and Housewifization 74
The Dialectics of ‘Progress and Retrogression’ 74
Subordination of Women, Nature and Colonies: The
underground of capitalist patriarchy or civilised
society 77
The Persecution of the Witches and the Rise of
Modern Society. Women’s productive record at the
end of the Middle Ages 78
The Subordination and Breaking of the Female Body: Torture 82
Burning of Witches, Primitive Accumulation of Capital, and
the Rise of Modern Science 83
Colonization and Primitive Accumulation of Capital 88
Women under Colonialism 90
Women under German Colonialism 97
White Women in Africa 100
Housewifization 100
4. Housewifization International: Women and the New
International Division of Labour 112
International Capital Rediscovers Third World Women 112
Why Women? 116
Women as ‘Breeders’ and Consumers 120
Linkages: Some Examples 127
Conclusion 142
5. Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Primitive
Accumulation of Capital 145
Dowry-Murders 146
Amniocentesis and ‘Femicide’ 151
Rape 153
Analysis 157
Are men rapists by nature? 162
Conclusion 168
6. National Liberation and Women’s Liberation 175
Women in the ‘Dual Economy’ . 180
The Soviet Union 180
China 181
Vietnam 188
Why are women mobilized for the national liberation
struggle? 194
Why are women ‘pushed back’ again after the liberation
struggle? 196
Theoretical blind-alleys 199
7. Towards a Feminist Perspective of a New Society 205
The case for a middle-class feminist movement 205
Basic Principles and Concepts 209
Towards a feminist concept of labour 216
An alternative economy 219
Intermediate steps 224
Autonomy over consumption 225
Autonomy over production 228
Struggles for human dignity 229
Bibliography 236
Index 247
Foreword
The idea of writing this book arose out of my desire to clarify some of the recurring
confusions regarding the issue of feminism. I realized that, while the feminist
movement was spreading to ever more regions of the world, while women’s issues
were becoming more and more ‘acceptable’ to the rulers of the world, the
questions of what this movement was fighting against and what it was fighting for
were becoming increasingly blurred.
While many of us would agree that our enemy is capitalist patriarchy as a
system, and not just men, we cannot deny that many feminists do not even talk of
capitalism, or if they do, have a rather limited notion of this system and simply try
to add the feminist analysis to the traditional Marxist analysis. Others only want
more equality with men, like the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) supporters in
the USA, and do not even aspire to transcend capitalist patriarchy as a system.
Similarly, most of us feel that the feminist rebellion has crossed all barriers of
class, race and imperialism, because women everywhere are victims of sexism and
male dominance. We, therefore, feel that there is a realistic base for international
solidarity among women, or for global sisterhood. On the other hand, we cannot
close our eyes to the stark fact that women of all classes in the West, and
middle-class women in the Third World, are also among those whose standard of
living is based on the ongoing exploitation of poor women and men in the
underdeveloped regions and classes.
Obviously, it is not enough to say that all women are exploited and oppressed
by men. There is not only the hierarchical division between the sexes; there are
also other social and international divisions intrinsically interwoven with the
dominance relation of men over women. That means the feminist movement
cannot ignore the issues of class, or the exploitative international division of
labour, and imperialism. On the other hand, the old argument, put forward by
scientific socialists, that the ‘woman question’ is a secondary contradiction and
belongs to the sphere of ideology, the superstructure or culture, can no longer be
upheld to explain reality for women, particularly since everywhere the feminist
rebellion was sparked off around the issue of violence.
The unresolved questions concern the relationship between patriarchy and
capitalism, in other words, the relationship between women’s oppression and
exploitation and the paradigm of never-ending accumulation and ‘growth’,
between capitalist patriarchy and the exploitation and subordination of colonies.
1
Patriarchy and Capital Accumulation
These are not academic questions. They concern every woman in her everyday
life, and the feminist movement in its political goals and existence. If we are
unable to find plausible answers to these questions, the danger arises that the
feminist rebellion may be co-opted by the forces that only want to continue the
destructive model of capital accumulation and which need the vitality of this
movement to feed the slackening ‘growth’ process.
The following is not the result of a systematic study of the questions raised.
These questions have cropped up again and again in the course of many struggles,
discussions, and meetings in which I have participated in recent years. Many of the
discussions took place between Third World and First World women, some of
them in Third World countries. The insights gained are not, therefore, something
I could have gained without the existence of the international women’s move­
ment. Many women — and some men — gave me valuable ideas or feedback. I
cherish most those which challenged some of my assumptions and thus forced me
to deepen and broaden my analysis. Thus, the question of what unites and what
divides women in overdeveloped and underdeveloped classes, countries and
regions played a crucial role. So did the question of the role of violence in the
establishment of patriarchal men-women relations, as well as in the process of
capital accumulation.
In the course of time, it became clear to me that the confusions in the feminist
movement worldwide will continue unless we understand the ‘woman question’ in
the context of all social relations that constitute our reality today, that means in the
context of a global division of labour under the dictates of capital accumulation.
The subordination and exploitation of women, nature and colonies are the pre­
condition for the continuation of this model.
The second thing which became clear was the realization that women in their
struggle to regain their humanity have nothing to gain from the continuation of
this paradigm. Feminists everywhere would do well to give up the belief expressed
by scientific socialism that capitalism, through its greed for never-ending
accumulation or ‘growth’, has created the preconditions for women’s liberation,
which then can be realized under socialism. Today, it is more than evident that.the
accumulation process itself destroys the core of the human essence everywhere,
because it is based on the destruction of women’s autarky over their lives and
bodies. As women have nothing to gain in their humanity from the continuation of
the growth model, they are able to develop a perspective of a society which is not
based on exploitation of nature, women and other peoples.
Methodologically, this means that it is not sufficient to look only at one side of
the coin, but it is necessary to study the connections that exist between the various
parts which have been divided up by the sexual and international division of
labour. It also means understanding that these divisions and connections have a
material reality because the world market does indeed connect the remotest
comers of the world and the strangest people. But though these connections
factually exist, they are almost totally obscured from our consciousness. We
factually consume a mass of commodities produced by people in Third World
countries, of whom we are not even aware. In order to overcome this alienation
brought about by commodity production in the international and sexual division
2
I
Foreword
of labour, I have tried not only to look at what has happened to women in the
West, but also at what was happening at the same time to women in the colonies.
By looking at both sides of the coin it became possible to identify the contradictory
policies regarding women which were, and still are, promoted by the brotherhood
of militarists, capitalists, politicians and scientists in their effort to keep the growth
model going. It became possible to overcome the limited view of cultural relativ­
ism which claims that women are divided by culture worldwide, whereas, in fact,
we are both divided and connected by commodity relations.
‘Looking at both sides of the coin’ was facilitated in my case by the fact that I
had the opportunity to meet and discuss with many women from Asia, Latin
America and Africa while I worked as a co-ordinator of the programme, ‘Women
and Development’, at the Institute of Social Studies at the Hague. In addition the
fact that I lived and worked for many years in India and had many contacts with
Indian feminists also helped me to look at both sides of the coin. Therefore, much
of the following analysis is based on my experiential and empirical knowledge of
India and the new Indian women’s movement. I owe a great deal of my insights to
my Indian sisters, both the rural and the urban ones. The courage with which they
are waging a struggle against patriarchal structures and institutions has been a
great source of inspiration to me.
I have also learned a lot from my Third World students at the Institute of Social
Studies. Their eagerness to understand what feminism was all about, and what
relevance it had for themselves and for the burning problems of poverty in their
own countries prompted me to look for answers which could be valid not only for
Western feminists, but also for Third World feminists.
Starting with the recognition that patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale
constitute the structural and ideological framework within which women’s reality
today has to be understood, the feminist movement worldwide cannot but chal­
lenge this framework, along with the sexual and the international divisions of
labour which are bound up with it.
The first chapter tries to clarify what the main challenges of feminism are. After
a discussion of the history of the new women’s movement in the USA and Europe,
with special reference to its main issues, campaigns and debates, it focusses on the
question of what differentiates the new women’s movement from the old one.
Further, what the emergence of feminist movements in Asia, Latin America and
Africa can mean for the solution of the old unresolved questions: namely, the
character of capitalism, the issue of colonialism and a socialist vision of a future
society. In this respect, the feminist analysis of violence and of housework and the
feminist concept of politics have played a crucial role in challenging the old
theories of women’s liberation.
The second chapter tries to trace the social origins of the sexual division of
labour. The common, mostly biologistic, assumptions on the origins of the
dominance relationship between men and women are critically assessed, and the
notion is challenged that this relationship evolved either out of biological or of
economic determinants. It is emphasized that the monopoly over arms in the
hands of Man-the-Hunter/Warrior constitutes the political power necessary for
the establishment of lasting relations of exploitation between men and women, as
3
Patriarchy and Capital Accumulation
well as between different classes and peoples. Thus, the exploitative sexual
division is the social paradigm upon which the international division of labour is
built up.
The third chapter traces the history of the related and double-faced processes
of colonization and housewifization. The conquest and exploitation of the colonies
from the 16th century onwards was the basis for capital accumulation in Europe.
But equally important was the destruction of the autonomy of women over their
bodies and life during the witch pogroms during the same centuries. In this
chapter, I try to trace the processes and policies by which other countries and
women are defined as ‘nature’, or made into colonies to be exploited by WHITE
MAN in the name of capital accumulation or progress and civilization.
The fourth chapter extends this analysis to the contemporary new international
division of labour, and the role which women have to play as cheapest producers
and consumers in this world market system. The policy of defining women
everywhere as dependent housewives, or the process of housewifization, is identi­
fied as the main strategy of international capital to integrate women worldwide
into the accumulation process. This implies the splitting up of the economy and
the labour market into a so-called formal, modem sector, in which mainly men
work, and into an informal sector, where the masses of women work who are not
considered to be real wage-workers, but housewives.
The fifth chapter focusses on the role of violence against women in the
establishment of production relations which are not based on wage-labour proper.
The analysis is based mainly on the experiences of women in India and on their
struggles against dowry-murder and rape. The various forms of direct violence
against women are analysed, not as a result of some timeless inborn male sadism,
but as a mechanism in the process of ongoing ‘primitive accumulation’ by which
men try to accumulate wealth and productive capital, based not on economic but
on direct coercion, and on the extension of patriarchal control over women. In this
chapter it is shown that patriarchal violence is not a feature of some feudal past,
but the ‘necessary’ correlate of the so-called modernization process.
The sixth chapter addresses itself to the question of whether socialist countries
which have gone through a war of liberation or a revolution can provide the
desired alternative for women’s liberation which, according to the foregoing
analysis, is not possible under the laws of capital accumulation. On the basis of the
examples of the USSR, China and Vietnam, it is shown that, in spite of the
socialist rhetoric about women’s participation in social production, the socialist
accumulation process is also in reality based on the same mechanism of house­
wifization and on the model of dualizing the economy into a male-dominated,
‘progressive’ socialized sector, and into a subsidiary, private or informal sector,
where mostly women are found.
The last chapter is devoted to the attempt to develop a feminist perspective of a
future society which would, indeed, transcend the accumulation model based on
the ever-expanding growth of commodities, wealth and productive forces. A
society in which nature, women and other peoples are not colonized and exploited
for the sake of others and the abstract idea of progress, would have to be based on
the recognition that our human world is finite. It would require a new concept of
4
Foreword
work which would transcend the present division between necessary labour -
increasingly relegated to machines - and creative labour reserved for human
beings. The maintenance of the combination of necessary and creative work is
seen as a precondition for human happiness. Such a concept of labour would have
to lead to the abolition of the present sexual division of labour, as well as the
international division of labour. It would have to be based on an alternative
economy, an economy which would not be based on exploitation of nature,
women and colonies, but would attempt to be self-sufficient to a large extent. A
first step towards such autarky and the regaining of control over our lives and
bodies could be a consumer liberation movement, started by women in the
overdeveloped classes and countries. Such a movement, combined with a pro­
duction liberation movement in underdeveloped countries and classes, could go a
long way towards women’s liberation in a global context.
5
1. What is Feminism?
Where are we today?
The Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) is perhaps the most controversial, as
well as the most far-reaching of the new social movements: the ecology move­
ment, the alternative movement, the peace movement, and others. By its very
existence it provokes people. Whereas one can lead a dispassionate intellectual or
political discourse on the ‘ecology question’, the ‘peace issue’, the issue of Third
World dependency, the ‘woman question’ invariably leads to highly emotional
reactions from men, and from many women. It is a sensitive issue for each person.
The reason for this is that the women’s movement does not address its demands
mainly to some external agency or enemy, such as the state, the capitalists, as the
other movements do, but addresses itself to people in their most intimate human
relations, the relationship between women and men, with a view to changing these
relations. Therefore, the battle is not between particular groups with common
interests or political goals and some external enemy, but takes place within women
and men and between women and men. Every person is forced, sooner or later, to
take sides. And taking sides means that something within ourselves gets tom
apart, that what we thought was our identity disintegrates and has to be created
anew. This is a painful process. Most men and women try to avoid it because they
fear that if they allow themselves to become aware of the true nature of the
man-wo man relationship in our societies, the last island of peace, of harmony in
the cold brutal world of money-making, power games and greed will be destroyed.
Moreover, if they allow this issue to enter their consciousness, they will have to
admit that they themselves, women and men, are not only victims, on the one side
(women), and villains (men), on the other, but that they are also accomplices in
the system of exploitation and oppression that binds women and men together.
And that, if they want to come to a truly free human relationship, they will have to
give up their complicity. This is not only so for men whose privileges are based on
this system, but also for women whose material existence is often bound up with it.
Feminists are those who dare to break the conspiracy of silence about the
oppressive, unequal man-woman relationship and who want to change it. But
speaking up about this system of male dominance, giving it certain names like
‘sexism’ or ‘patriarchy’, has not reduced the ambivalence mentioned above, but
rather intensified and broadened it.
6