Fwd: [blind-democracy] Cosmetics, fashions and the exploitation of women

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2016 09:13:12 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Cosmetics, fashions and the exploitation of women
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org

Cosmetics, plus fashions, plus the exploitation of women, equals Capitalism.
I'd get all worked up, except it's far greater than merely the
exploitation of women...as bad as that is. It's the exploitation of
our children. Rather than protecting and nurturing our nation's
young, they are being driven into debt in order to obtain an
education. Talk about a System that shoots itself in the foot?
Capitalism stands against abortion, so millions of babies will pop
into the world to replace those who are no longer productive, but then
are held down by Greed driven Capitalists who can't wait until these
children are grown and working, they begin sucking the marrow out of
their young bones even as they exit college. And there are the elders
who are still a resource to the Capitalists. Perhaps they don't look
so good, in their old wrinkled worn out bodies, but they can still be
tapped for a good deal of money on their way out. Forget the fact
that they spent their lives sweating for "The Man", bringing great
wealth to Capitalists off-shore banks.
And lest we forget it, Capitalists have managed to get their greedy
fingers inside our bodies, holding us hostage for bloated medical
costs.
When Donald Trump speaks of returning America to her greatness, he is
thinking in terms of those good old days back before FDR, and those
Glory Days during the Reagan Years. But the real truth is that the
Donald Trumps of America are living, right now, in a Golden Age. And
we in the working class are enabling them.
We must come to understand that America has a fatal Cancer. It is
named Capitalism. Can we compromise it? Can we contain it? Can we
simply ignore it, pretend it isn't there? No! Of course not! It's a
Cancer, just like the one in a woman's breast or in a man's Prostate,
like them it must be cut out or shrunk out of existence. Cancer is
not our friend. It is our enemy and must be destroyed.

Carl Jarvis



On 10/5/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> http://themilitant.com/2016/8038/803849.html
> The Militant (logo)
>
> Vol. 80/No. 38 October 10, 2016
>
> (Books of the Month column)
>
> Cosmetics, fashions and the exploitation of women
>
> Cosmetics, Fashions and the Exploitation of Women is one of
> Pathfinder's Books of the Month for October. Joseph Hansen, a leader of
> the Socialist Workers Party, sparked a lively debate when under the pen
> name Jack Bustelo he wrote an exposé in the Militant in 1954 on the
> profit-driven cosmetics industry and their efforts to propagandize women
> that they desperately needed cosmetics to get beautiful. This book is
> drawn from the record of that debate, which became known in the history
> of the SWP as the "Bustelo controversy." It includes an introduction by
> current SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters along with other articles
> discussing the pressures that bear down on women and men in capitalist
> society, especially during periods of political reaction and retreat.
> Excerpted is SWP leader Evelyn Reed's article, "The Woman Question and
> the Marxist Method," defending Bustelo. Copyright © 1986 by Pathfinder
> Press. Reprinted by permission.
>
>
> BY EVELYN REED
> As we have frequently pointed out, the past fourteen years of war boom
> and prosperity have produced a conservatizing effect upon the working
> class which we describe as a "bourgeoisification." One of the forms this
> takes is the readiness of the workers to accept bourgeois opinions and
> propaganda as scientific truth and adapt themselves to it.
> Like the whole working class, the party is under constant pressure and
> bombardment from this massive bourgeois propaganda machine. As the
> conscious vanguard, however, we must not permit ourselves to become
> influenced by it to the slightest degree. On the contrary, we must
> counter this mood in the working class through unremitting ideological
> struggle.
>
> Certain discussions now taking place in the party reveal that a certain
> amount of adaptation to bourgeois propaganda has arisen which, although
> probably unwitting, is a signal that should alert us to the danger.
> These discussions revolve around a very important and highly complex
> subject, the woman question. Since many aspects of this question are
> still obscure, and all aspects are sensitive, it is all the more
> imperative that we begin such a discussion on the basis of utmost
> clarity and objectivity. …
>
> The contradictory position of the comrades arises out of the notion that
> questions concerning women in the realm of sex, beauty, and so on
> transcend class lines. The discussion, therefore, is taking place in an
> abstract void, apart from history and the class struggle. This notion
> arises out of the bourgeois myth that the needs of all women in the
> realm of sexual beauty are identical for all classes of women because of
> their common identity as women.
>
> This is completely false. The class distinctions between women transcend
> their sex identity as women. This is above all true in modern capitalist
> society, the epoch of the sharpest polarization of class forces.
>
> The woman question cannot be divorced from the class question. Any
> confusion on this score can only lead to erroneous conclusions and
> setbacks. It will divert the class struggle into a sex struggle of all
> women against all men.
>
> Historically, the sex struggle was part of the bourgeois feminist
> movement of the last century. It was a reform movement, conducted within
> the framework of the capitalist system, and not seeking to overthrow it.
> But it was a progressive struggle in that women revolted against almost
> total male domination on the economic, social, and domestic fronts.
> Through the feminist movement, a number of important reforms were won
> for women. But the bourgeois feminist movement has run its course. …
>
> [A]s capitalism developed, there arose an enormous expansion of the
> productive machine and with it the need for a mass market. Since women
> represent half the population, profiteers in "beauty" eyed this mass and
> lusted to exploit it for their own purposes. And so the fashion field
> was expanded out of the narrow confines of the rich and made socially
> obligatory upon the whole female population.
>
> Now, for the first time, class distinctions were covered over and
> concealed behind sex identity, to serve the needs of this sector of big
> business. And the bourgeois hucksters began grinding out the propaganda:
> All women want to be beautiful. Therefore all women have the same
> interest in cosmetics and fashions. Beauty became identical with fashion
> and all women were sold on their common "needs and wants" for these
> fashions.
>
> Today, billions are coined out of every department in the fashion field;
> cosmetics, clothes, hairdos, slenderizing salons, beauty salons,
> jewelry, fake and real, and so on. Beauty, it was discovered, was a very
> flexible formula. All you had to do to become rich was to discover a new
> aid to beauty and convince the whole population of women that they
> "needed and wanted" this aid. …
>
> Thus, when the comrades defend the right of women to use cosmetics,
> fashions, etc., without clearly distinguishing between such a right and
> the capitalist social compulsion to use them, they have fallen into the
> trap of bourgeois propaganda. Even worse, as the vanguard of women, they
> are leading the mass of women into this fashion rat race and into
> upholding and perpetuating these profiteers, exploiters, and scoundrels.
>
> It is contended that so long as capitalism prevails, we must abide by
> these cosmetic and fashion decrees. Otherwise, we will be left behind in
> the economic and social rear. This is true. We must give at least a
> token recognition of the harsh reality.
>
> But this does not mean that we must accept these edicts and compulsions
> complacently, or without protest. The workers in the plants are often
> obliged to accept speedups, pay cuts, and attacks on their unions. But
> they always and invariably accept them under protest, under continuing
> struggle against them, and in a constant movement to oppose their needs
> and will against their exploiters.
>
> The class struggle is a movement of opposition, not adaptation, and this
> holds true not only of the workers in the plants, but of the women as
> well, both workers and housewives. It is because the issues are more
> obscured in the realm of the women as a sex that some of our own
> comrades have fallen into the trap of adaptation. In this respect we
> must change our course. Let us begin to demonstrate, through history,
> that the modern fashion standard of beauty is not a permanent fixture,
> and that the working woman can and should have something to say about it.
>
>
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