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Feminism and the spirit of CLAWS So what does feminism have to do with CLAWS, you ask? Very good question. CLAWS is a pro-leisure and anti-wage-slavery group which is part of a more general feminist framework. Let's start with a few quotes: "...women have been ostracized from the mainstream work world for so long that they have a clearer vantage point from which to witness it all. They can see the toil of work and the price we all pay for it." "A patriarchal society is not characterized by only men doing men's tasks but by women's tasks being devalued...the propagation of the work ethic, with its consequent devaluation of women's work, is just an attack on the part of the patriarchal system. The work ethic is fundamentally incompatible with any reasonable notions of fairness and justice." "Patriarchy is not just a way of organizing society, it is also a set of assumptions about what constitutes a self, the first being that there isn't enough to go around. For one group of people to be fully "authorized", others have to be subordinate to them - "commodified" and "reified" in one way or another: controlled, or simply silenced." The whole focus of CLAWS as an organization is creative - we are generating alternatives to the wage slavery mindset. As long as our world is set up in a hierarchical manner, with the "authorized" people controlling their "subordinates", long-term viable alternatives will not be available. (Just think about it...one of the common reasons people are fired is for "insubordination!" This is unacceptable.) We wish to reate alternatives to the current patriarchal industrial capitalist system. If, however, we simply decide that we must strive toward the dominant role instead of that of subordinate, we aren't engaged in creating alternatives. Instead, we are (however unwittingly) contributing to the very system we want to dismantle - only from the "privileged" side instead of the subordinate side. The only way to real and lasting change will be through transcending the dichotomy altogether, and this is where feminism comes in. As an alternative to the current patriarchal system, especially as it manifests in the USA, it provides hope. For another perspective, here's a quote from Fredy Perlman's article The Reproduction of Daily Life to illustrate the focus of CLAWS more clearly: "In the performance of their daily activities, the members of capitalist society simultaneously carry out two processes: they reproduce the form of their activities, and they eliminate the material conditions to which this form of activity initially responded. But they do not know they carry out these processes; their own activities are not transparent to them. They are under the illusion that their activities are responses to natural conditions beyond their control and do not see that they are themselves authors of those conditions. (emphasis added) The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life; the task of critical theory is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent, to make the reproduction of the social form of capitalist activity visible within people's daily activities. Under [late-stage patriarchal] capitalism, daily life consists of related activities which reproduce and expand the capitalist form of social activity. The sale of labor-time for a price (a wage), the embodiment of labor-time in commodities (salable goods, both tangible and intangible), the consumption of tangible and intangible commodities (such as consumer goods and spectacles) - these activities which characterize daily life under capitalism are not manifestations of "human nature," nor are they imposed...by forces beyond their control." The mission of CLAWS is to get the message out, to get people to wake up, to think about their choices. If you believe that forces beyond your control force you to get a "real job" and submit to the will of your employer, we ask you to consider whether this mindset is just perpetuating the very structure that constrains you in the first place. CLAWS is here to help generate alternatives, and help people see that they have choices. Once you see that you are part of a dynamic system, you are empowered to work with your own "wage slavery" mindset, and this is the way to true, long-term change. But we can't do it alone. You've heard the phrase "divide and conquer", I'm sure. CLAWS is here to assist us in breaking free from our own perceived limitations. To begin further research on the connection between feminism and work, we recommend the following books and essays:
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"What publishers are looking for these days isn’t radical feminism. It’s corporate feminism - a brand of feminism designed to sell books and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes and, most important, corporate America’s message, which runs: “Yes, women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort." "Feminism is a more complete analysis, deeper and farther reaching, and a better basis for social planning than communism or capitalism, because unlike them it gives value to free labor." "Women constitute half the world's population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world's income, and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property." "The value of capitalist labor is determined by patriarchal and racist social relations. Women all over the world are paid less than men. But "work" - in the sense of socially necessary tasks - is not just wage labor...women's unpaid work is essential but rendered invisible. Economic exploitation goes hand in hand with the emotional exploitation of women in public and private settings." "There can be no abolition of capitalist social relations without the abolition of patriarchal social relations because...the exploitation of unpaid educational and domestic labor of women is an important base for the capitalist realization of value; because patriarchal structures delegate the task of turning children - in the course of the process of education - into individuals adapted to the needs of a market society (and thus reproducing the capitalist system) to women..." "Public representations of girls weigh upon the girls themselves and continue to as they enter womanhood. The source of these representations isn't a government, of course, or any particular institution, but rather the drive for unlimited corporate profit, which has taken the commodification of girls to heights undreamed of in our patriarchal past." |
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Design & Copyright Notices
This site has incorporated material from the former Leisure Party site.
All material on this web site that is otherwise unattributed is (c) Copyright 1998 - 2004, D. JoAnne Swanson for Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery. Permission is granted to keep one copy of material on this site on a personal computer for private, home use only.
