Judy,
I have perhaps overstated my position. I would rather say that any
theoretical framework that doesn't include a class analysis is necessarily
incomplete. I agree that other forms of human exploitation exist and
perhaps new ones might emerge in a successful socialist state (by which I
understand one in which production use values -- goods and services that
satisfy human needs--is not subordinated to the production of exchange
value).
The various forms of oppression/subjugation coexist in contemporary
capitalist society. The point of "class analysis" concerns the primacy of
the division between labor and capital. I have never meant to imply that
all forms of oppression can be reduced to this relation . Rather, the
analysis of the class relations provides the "ariadne's thread" by which
sense can be made of the complex totality. It is very difficult to see
which other specific form of oppression/subjugation could provide a similar
framework. I just don't see how one can go from the specific analyses of
gender theorists such as Judith Butler to explain the fundamental division
between capital and labor in the present historical period but it is much
easier to see how that division can be used to make sense out of the
specific form that the subjugation of women assumes in contemporary society,
ditto for exploitation based on ethnicity.
This is really quite similar to Engestrom's position that the contradiction
between use value and exchange value is the fundamental contradiction in all
activity systems in capitalist society. As I've said before, it doesn't deny
the existence of other contradictions. Resolving the primary contradiction
(eg, establishing a "humanized/socialized" basis of economic organization),
even though it's primary, will not necessarily resolve the others. At a
very fundamental level I agree with the buddhist position that the sources
of human suffering are greed, ignorance, and hatred. Were socialism to
ensure that no human suffered from lack of the basic necessities, that the
social organization of the economy was not motivated by the production of
surplus value (profit), we probably would continue to suffer as a result of
these three causes and no doubt create forms of exploitation and subjugation
(generate increased suffering) as a result.
Paul H. Dillon
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