Nick's Place

Nicholas Barnard Transition and Development: Women in Third World Socialism 6/5/2001

I am a member of an interesting generation in relation to communism and the Cold War. The Soviet Union fell and the Western countries won the Cold War when I was about twelve. Somehow I ended up missing the societal lesson that communism is the greatest of evils, quite the opposite, I have come out with an ideological respect for communism that I do not have for US style capitalism.

Communism in many ways is a visionary's system. It relies on everyone's of the common good and requires everyone to be reasonably truthful and honest. Essentially it requires everyone to be selfless. Herein lies the problem with pure communism; it does not take into account the true nature of people. Communism also fails to account for the fact that each person has different strengths, responsibilities, and needs. There are very few astrophysicist, or movie stars that would want to work at the same pay scale as a factory worker, or a service industry employee. But on the other side there are millions of factory workers and service industry employees that would like to see the movie star take a pay cut so that they could be paid more.

Communism also fails to account for the individual needs of women. Communism asks women, much the same as US capitalism does now, to work two jobs, one formal, and the informal task of raising a household. The constant belief that the household is the woman's job is a vestige of heterosexuality. In its ideological state communism strips everyone of their history and societal roles and beliefs and assigns the common role of ensuring the good of everyone. In actuality is can only exist within science fiction. Thus as practice communism must exist in and at the same time reform the former structure of capitalism that it was spawned from.

I believe that by reading Maxine Molyneux's article “Mobilization Without Emancipation” has made me realize that communism is not devoid of many of the same struggles of equality that take place within capitalist countries. Capitalist countries have long suffered from the implicit and explicit directing of female members of the society into less desirable roles as both homemakers and mothers.

I also believe that there is an interesting parallel between the struggles of women in communist and capitalist societies and the struggles of small communist nations. In all societies women are expected to shoulder a great deal of the work without an economic gain. In the two parent-worker household both parents work, but often the man is the one who decides the direction of the family and controls the finances, and the gain societal is seen as his, even if the assets are held jointly.

In first-third world relationships the first country world controls often what is to be produced and when, thus controlling the finances and demands for production and is the one who has actual economic gains, and the third world countries abide by this mandate, often doing the undesirable work, and additional work to take care of the internal needs of the country. Thus the first world functions much like a husband and the third world like a wife, albeit these relationships call of polygamy that would make even old school Mormons shutter.

Third World Communism has the disadvantage that it must exist as a subordinated member of the world economy. Much as the women in all societies exist as subordinated members of their societies. It is also quite interesting to examine how in many ways a fractalizing of societies exists. The most basic unit commonly looks like the largest unit. I find this interesting in the realization that all systems are formed by humans and humans often choose the same choices on a country-to-country basis as they do on a person-to-person basis. Perhaps communism would work with people who, on a person-to-person basis cared about each other and developing their friends as much as they cared about their own personal economic gains. In many ways this probably exists within small close nit societies but is overshadowed by the dominance of capitalism.

I find myself reconsidering Marx's initial belief that capitalism would evolve into communism, I thinking about the movements of women and societies in general, I believe that Marx may be right, and we just haven't been patient enough.