Mastodawn

'Lewis takes up a debate with several Black feminists who have, at various times, questioned the idea of family abolition, whose central argument has been that, very often, Black families have been sites of resistance against racism. Similarly, we could point to many experiences of class struggle in which sectors of working families have played a key role against the attacks of capital: supporting strikes, establishing relations of solidarity between factories and neighborhoods, staging rent strikes, maintaining soup kitchens, creating movements in defense of public services, and many other forms of resistance. The tradition of “women’s commissions” in strikes, for example, has allowed the working class to articulate fighting forces far beyond the workplace.

'To this criticism Lewis responds that, even so, we should not cease working for the abolition of the family, since we would not need its “protective shield” if we managed to build a society without racism. The argument contains a grain of truth, but it stops halfway. It fails to contemplate the role that the family relations within sectors of the working class and oppressed can play in moments of heightened class struggle. On another level, it doesn’t account for the fact that capitalism, while it needs such a “social cell” for its own reproduction, constantly undermines working families’ very conditions of existence. Marx and Engels remarked on this in the mid-19th century, pointing to the length of the working day, the lack of decent housing, and the general precariousness of working class life.'

Josefina L. Martínez : https://www.leftvoice.org/love-and-care-beyond-capitalism/

#property #gender #subordination #dependence #family #debates #debate #abolition #antiCapitalism #Fourier #Lewis #sociology #anthropology #communities #feminism #feminisms #chores #care #queer #rainbowMafia #historyOfIdeas #Marxism #relationships #abolitionism #culturalism #radicalFeminism #materialism #classes #revolution #domesticWork #classStruggle #careWork #historyOfFeminism

Love and Care Beyond Capitalism - Left Voice

The new book by Sophie Lewis inspires debates about family abolition and socialism.

Left Voice

Jonathan Emmesedi Nov 12, 2024

This lucidly written and elegantly argued book should be read by everybody on the left, especially those of us apt to turn to concepts such as "false consciousness", "hegemony", or "dominant ideology" when explaining the current impasse of socialist and social democratic parties.

‘The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn’ by Vivek Chibber reviewed by Chris James Newlove – Marx & Philosophy Society

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/21163_the-class-matrix-social-theory-after-the-cultural-turn-by-vivek-chibber-reviewed-by-chris-james-newlove/

#TheClassMatrix #VivekChibber #Class #SocialTheory #Marx #Materialism #Marxism #Culturalism #Socialism #SocialDemocracy #PoliticalTheory #Politics

‘The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn’ by Vivek Chibber reviewed by Chris James Newlove

The Class Matrix concisely and systematically argues the case for the continued importance of class for the radical left today. Vivek Chibber rigorously debunks various long held understandings that characterise radical left thought since the cultural turn. Chibber situates the cultural turn as arising from debates within Marxism (specifically the British New Left) on how to understand the seeming stability of capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Key moments in the cultural turn include the role of the New Left Review and the appointment of Stuart Hall as director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in…

Miguel Afonso Caetano Dec 30, 2023

#Decoloniality #IdentityPolitics #Culturalism #Socialism: "After prolonged exposure to the jargon of decoloniality, the “de-” in “decolonial” actually begins to sound more appropriate: signifying, as it well might, the erasure or reversal not of colonialism itself but of its concept and historical referent. Why, after all, is there so little to be found in PDCI — and generally throughout the decolonial screeds of Mignolo — concerning the specifics of colonialism itself, its material basis and conditions, not to mention the actual, practically inexhaustible details of its historiography, anti-colonial movements proving no exception to this rule? Whatever the deeper reasons for it, this factual deficit is crucial to the critique and critical decipherment of the jargon of decoloniality — almost as if its terminological extravagances and redundancies and its flat-out rhetorical hubris were ironic compensation for an underlying historical vacuum.

Part of the answer will no doubt also reflect the typically contemporary and cosmopolitan purview of more vernacular calls to “decolonize.” While, as a slogan, the latter does not necessarily ignore the historical impact of colonialism on questions of present-day racial injustice and struggles against the barriers set by national-imperial privilege, even the most practical and engaged demand for decolonizing does not usually get beyond the limits of identity politics and its conventional intellectual backdrop, culturalism." https://jacobin.com/2023/12/walter-mignolo-politics-of-decolonial-investigations-review-decoloniality-postcolonialism-academic-jargon-universalism/

The Reactionary Jargon of Decoloniality

Cloaked in an impenetrable jargon, “decoloniality” dehistoricizes and culturalizes colonialism. It’s a political and intellectual dead end for socialists.

-i Nov 2, 2018

a #list of #book the #independent suggests one ought to #read before death comes along.

I wonder whether the curiously mainly not #translated books are a certain reflection of an #english lingo mono #culturalism? https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/books-best-greatest-read-before-you-die-classic-novels-literature-essential-austen-orwell-dickens-a8612606.html

The 40 best books to read before you die

Losing yourself in a great novel is one of life’s joys. Here our critics Ceri Radford and Chris Harvey pick the books you need to read