ah, yes GWS are deffo cult like. If thats the group being referred to in the OP, then they are correct.
I believe they had a slogan over the afghanistan war that was 'Caring Not Killing' or 'Bomb Them With Love'...
Doubtless they support very important women's centres in afflicted countries - but how they became the main cheerleaders for Hugo Chavez in london i do not know.
Well that shouldn't be a mystery; the new Venezuelan constitution says this:
Article 88: The State guarantees the equality and equitable treatment of men and women in the exercise of the right to work. The state recognizes work at home as an economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth. Housewives are entitled to Social Security in accordance with law.
I used to work with a few people from the Global Womens' Strike. I don't think they are cult like or Stalinist. Dogmatic at times certainly. I think it has a political culture whch kinda stayed in the 70s, when women really had to fight their corner on the left, see for instance there is a documentary about one of the Vietnam demos in London where on the bus down from Manchester a chap is explaining they have legal support, ie someone to look after arrestees, and then someone to look after the girls. I think people of later generations can forget how bad it was. I don't agree with their version of autonomy which basically means that our organisation has autonomy - I don't think it is fruitful to coalition building. I have no problems with a womens' autonomy thing which was multi-organisational - an autonomous wing of a movement. I think they have a tendency to believe the worst about other people or groups.
I can remember finding their theory a lot more attractive than the "abolish gender" malarky, but their practise seems to me to revolve around what look to me an awful lot like 'transitional demands' . They like Greenham Common and Harry Cleaver. They don't like feminism - they have a focus on women as a sector of the working class, which then should have autonomy from the rest of the class....not sure if I can remember right but I think they see feminism as divisive and for careerists.
Re: Chavez it seems very very odd, but there has always been a bit of Third Worldism in autonomist Marxism.
If you mean child benefit, it's universal and non means tested.
yes, but it's about 20 pounds a week - so I don't think it really counts as contributing to living expenses - more like paying for the nappies or school uniform
You can't sign on if your husband is working tho.
yes you can
Quote:
Housewives are entitled to Social Security in accordance with law.How radical, oh wait hasn't that been the case in Britain for over half a century?
if the husband is on a salary, you'd get virtually nothing from the state for being a housewife - except the child allowance that Jack mentioned (about 20 pounds a week).
I think being able to claim a reasonable wage from the state for doing housework would have a hugely radical effect upon the labour market - and for that reason isn't likely to happen
Not sure, but I think RCG was into WfH for a while, in Britain.
Libcommers should probably be more into wages for housework having had all that experience with what most people would consider to be 'unproductive exchanges' (irrespective of whether they are being paid or not while writing them).
Child benefit and 'social security for housewives' is not the same thing. In Ireland a married woman can sign on - but what she actually gets is means tested off her husbands income - so if he is working she gets nothing, but is still on the 'live registrar', so can get in to community employment schemes for the unemployed, and the like (at least when they had those schemes I think they have all been cut now). I'm pretty sure whatever they have in Venezuela is on paper different from this.
Revol didn't the ASF have some kinda relationship or joint work with GWS?
You can't get JSA if your partner is in fuill time employment above 16 hours a week or something like that can you?
You can get NI contribution-based JSA, but not the means-based element. To be entitled to the conts-based element, you need to have to have paid national insurance for a certain number of weeks (I forget how many) in the last two complete tax years before the date of your claim. Which pretty much excludes anyone who hasn't been in regular paid work for two years or more.
I think they came to an International Womens Day event, I dunno for sure though, had no interest in talking to them, they were old, mostly tankies and dressed terribly. They were also involved in stuff around Shannon I'm pretty sure.
I'd imagine the reality of what is in Venezuela isn't much better than over here, no matter what wanky rhetoric they use.
Well that shouldn't be a mystery; the new Venezuelan constitution says this:Quote:
Article 88: The State guarantees the equality and equitable treatment of men and women in the exercise of the right to work. The state recognizes work at home as an economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth. Housewives are entitled to Social Security in accordance with law.
actually, that's as may be - but GWS were not championing this, rather simply championing Chavez and the MVR expecially around the 'Vota No!' campaign - the referendum he held on his reign in 200(?)4. They actually went there to 'observe' and contribute.
I dunno about London, but the ones I knew in Ireland were into Harry Cleaver, CLR James, Selma James, and were quite anti-Leninist. Complete love affair with Chavez though, see: http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/VenezIndex.htm
The wider movement did get a bit weird, but there was good stuff and bad stuff like anything else. The stuff published by Falling Wall Press in the 70s and 80s and the various bits and bobs that have come out from the same people since are still better than anything else around and laid the foundations for the good bits of eco-feminism, having a huge influence in India where the most militant and interesting women's movements in the world currently reside.
I dunno about London, but the ones I knew in Ireland were into Harry Cleaver, CLR James, Selma James, and were quite anti-Leninist. Complete love affair with Chavez though, see: http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/VenezIndex.htm
Sounds like the beginnings to a good critique of the theoretical weaknesses of Cleaver, James and James.
New clashes between locals and riot police erupt in the south Corfu town of Lefkimi over the construction of open refuse dump.
Text by US academic Harry Cleaver, showing why work is still central to today's society, and that a Marxist economic analysis is still relevant.
in aufheben's review of the arcane of reproduction they say
"However in the present critique we have chosen to deal only with the particular theoretical development by Leopoldina Fortunati and not with the wider issue of Wages for Housework - a treatment that would have to take on the rather cult-like behaviour of the movement espousing this demand."
can someone speak to this? what do they mean by cult-like behaviour?
Admin - thread title changed to add meaning