At 10:19 PM -0500 8/4/02, Carrol Cox wrote:

>In fact, rereading the definition more carefully, the first long clause
>appears increasingly incoherent:

The definition is fairly impenetrable. I gather the point the writer is trying to make there is that being able to understand the essential economic relations in any system, how "surplus is pumped out of the direct producers" as you put it, is a prerequisite to grasping the principles of historical materialism.

[...]
>All in all I think you should look elsewhere for a satisfactory point of
>departure in getting a grasp on historical materialism.

Practical examples might be a better starting point. Actually, I saw an illustration in a TV documentary I watched last night, about the murders of a large number of young women in a Mexican border town. The illustration of historical materialism in action was probably unintentional, but nevertheless educational.

The background to it all was the social changes taking place as a result of the opening up of employment opportunities for large numbers of poor women in the maquiladoras. These opportunities had given them unprecedented independence. However these new material conditions create what the documentary referred to as "family conflict", by undermining the strong patriarchal culture. Women, especially young women, feel less inclined to tolerate being ordered about by their fathers, husbands and brothers when they are no longer economically dependent on them.

The local police had decided that all the murders were the work of a single serial killer, though this explanation did not appear to fit the facts. There seemed no consistent modus operandi and more likely explanation was that the different murders and disappearances were, at least in the main, a spate of isolated attacks. The police weren't interested in this possibility, they had managed to convince themselves that an Egyptian resident of the town was responsible for all the murders, despite the lack of any evidence. His status as an outsider seemed to make it easier for the local cops to believe this. That he would have to be a criminal genius, to orchestrate continuing rapes and murders, even from his jail cell, was no obstacle to the theory and elaborate conspiracies were suggested to explain why the murders were continuing long after he had been locked up.

Of course the series of murders of young women is hopefully an extreme, if not an isolated case. But such violence does often accompany drastic social change. What this story illustrated is how such changes in cultural attitudes are shaped by material conditions.

Patriarchal attitudes are part of the culture of feudal economic relations. Whatever other evils it might bring, capitalist economic relations dissolve the social relations of feudalism. Rather than being dependant on their fathers and husbands, women instead become dependant on an employer.  Most of the women in the documentary seemed in no doubt this was a big improvement, as indeed it is. It is only to be expected that they see no reason why they should continue to be treated as virtual chattels by men, but the male population is threatened by this significant social change and some can react savagely. The more sudden and drastic is the change, the more savage the reaction and in this case the change is being effectively imposed from outside the dominant culture and without much regard for its patriarchal sensibilities. In this instance, most of the new jobs in the maquiladoras of the town are for women.

Whereas inevitably if the new economic relations were being imposed from within the culture, there would be an automatic concession to the culture of patriarchy. Capitalists who had come out of that society would ensure that women were kept in their place, even if was less efficient economically. Things would eventually change of course, but less rapidly. American capitalists are less inclined to tolerate such inefficiencies. They prefer to employ women, probably because they produce more and (in the social context) expect less and are more obedient.

Patriarchy is hoisted on its own petard. ;-)

The upheaval is compounded by the massive influx of population to the towns where the maquiladoras are concentrated. The male population, uprooted both physically and socially, is having problems coping with the pace of social changes.

Subjective factors always seem to take at least a full generation to catch up with changes to material conditions.  The adult men (and even the women, who are the immediate beneficiaries of the change) will not change their ingrained attitudes in their lifetime of course. It will take a new generation, one who has experienced no other reality, to begin the process of adapting the culture to the new reality. But even then, those with a place in the new economic system will be quicker to adapt.

But change they must. Along with that change must come reform of institutions, law and aspirations. That's the basic principle of historical materialism, it isn't nearly as complicated as that "definition" seemed to make it.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas