What would it mean if our society prioritized social reproduction above production for profit? Our racist, cis-heteropatriarchal, capitalist dystopia is a world turned upside-down—where the essential work that creates & sustains life is assigned to women and subordinated to the making of profit. Instead of aiming to undue this perversion, mainstream feminism of the past decade has prioritized a “Lean In” strategy, advocating “equal opportunity domination” as the ultimate horizon of gender equality. According to this liberal-feminist doctrine, what the world needs is not the abolition of social hierarchy, but simply a more diverse representation to maintain seats of power that already enshrine and expand inequality. Thankfully, this bankrupt approach has been counter-punched by a new wave of feminist strikes emerging in recent years, including ones in Spain, Poland and the #RedForEd strikes in the U.S. that swept across the country in the months after Trump’s election. In the powerful and accessible book Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser articulate an urgent anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and eco-socialist vision of a feminism informed by the International Women’s Strike Movement. So in this episode, Matt & Jesse celebrate this new, more radical, more intersectional feminist vision for the 21st century—by exploring this indispensable text that is a brief, focused clarification of key issues in our shared emancipatory struggle. While it may seem like an outdated term, “the personal is the political”—a key rallying cry of 60’s Student Movements and Second-Wave Feminists—is a zeitgeist phrase that is ever worthy of being rescued in our Age of Climate Despair. The essential truth of this maxim is increasingly evidenced in women’s lives, and especially for single mothers and women of color who represent the majority of Americans who are laboring for starvation wages, risking their lives during a global pandemic to keep the world working for everyone else that doesn’t look like them. And though the voices and perspectives of women are so often silenced, shunted and brayed by Boyland Domination, we must recognize that the path towards justice and human liberation requires a robust feminist analysis. Because, on the Periodic Table of Injustice, the subjugation of women is the most common element found in the world. Misogyny is everywhere and it damages all of our lives, devaluing and dehumanizg women, trans, and non-binary folks, while unjustly exalting masculinity in a violently enforced tyranny of suffocating gender constructs. We live in a world designed by, and for, the interests of patriarchy, one of the very oldest forms of social hierarchy—an ancient institutional structure whose abolition must first start with the building of The Golden Square. So indeed, this rousing document, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, offers a forthright proclamation of values, and in so doing, properly identifies all those paper clips stuck to that sick magnet called capitalism. One-by-one, fingers to palm, the authors help us pry off those paper clips, so we can put them back in the bowl of new beginnings.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
Select Book Reviews:
Dr. Maria Shahid in Dawn: “A New Call to Arms”
Andrea D’Atri in Left Voice: “Feminism for the 99%: A Debate About Strategy”
Dana White in Socialist Alternative: “Review: Feminism for the 99%”
Marina Manoukian in Full Stop: “Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto – Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser”
About the Authors:
Cinzia Arruzza’s Faculty Page at The New School for Social Research
Tithi Bhattacharya: Author & Activist’s Official Website
Nancy Fraser: A Wikipedia Biography
Select Interviews with Authors:
Democracy Now Interview with Tithi Bhattacharya: “On International Women’s Day, Women Declare: Emancipation Comes Through the Rejection of Capitalism”
Nomiki Konst’s YouTube Interview with Tithi Bhattacharya: “Pink Hat Feminists Aren't the Answer”
Jacobin Magazine Interviews Nancy Fraser: “The Feminism of the 1 Percent Has Associated Our Cause With Elitism”
Daniel Denvir’s Jacobin Podcast, The Dig: “Feminism for the 99% with Tithi Bhattacharya”
Feminism of the 99%: A Wikipedia Overview
International Women’s Strike 2018: A Wikipedia Introduction to This Historic Event
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg & "Lean In" Feminism: A Wikipedia Exploration
The Book That Started It All: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg (2013)
What Started as a Book Has Become a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization to Support (Elite) Women (or Women Who Want to Outsource Their Oppression Onto Others): The Official Website
Two Left Books Critical of the Patron Saint of “Lean In” Feminism, Hillary Rodham Clinton:
My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency by Doug Henwood. Published in 2016 by OR Books.
False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton Edited by Liza Featherstone. Published in 2016 by Verso Books.
Dean Spade and Sarah Lazare in In These Times: “Women Now Run the Military-Industrial Complex. That’s Nothing To Celebrate.”
Velshi & Ruhle on MSNBC: “The Military-Industrial-Complex Is Now Run by Women”
David Brown in Politico: “How Women Took Over the Military-Industrial Complex”
Jonny Weeks in The Guardian: “International Women's Day Around the World (2018) – In Pictures”
Sam Jones in The Guardian: “More Than 5m Join Spain's 'Feminist Strike', Unions Say”
Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic: “The Hoarding of the American Dream”
Richard Reeves’ Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It. Published in 2017 by the Brookings Institution Press.
Lydia Saad in Gallup: “Socialism as Popular as Capitalism Among Young Adults in U.S.”
David Fitzgerald and Gabriel Black in World Socialist Web Site: “Support for Socialism Jumps by Nearly 10 Percent Among US Youth Amid Pandemic Depression”
Jack Kelly in Forbes: “Why Young Voters Are Embracing Bernie Sanders and Democratic Socialism”
Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic: “Thousands of Americans Have Become Socialists Since March; The Democratic Socialists of America Have an Estimated 10,000 New Members—Growth that Organizers Attribute, in Part, to the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
Mark Harman in LibCom.org: “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tankies, but Were Afraid to Ask”
Religion & Patriarchy emerged as two of the earliest institutionalized forms of hierarchy in human society, as detailed in Murray Bookchin’s Ecology of Freedom (1982). Published and Distributed by AK Press.
The Authors’ Book Dedication in Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto:
“For the Combahee River Collective, who envisioned the path early on and for the Polish and Argentine feminist strikers, who are breaking new ground today.”
Steve Cobble in The Nation: “Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition Created Today’s Democratic Politics”
Eric Blanc in New Labor Forum: “The Red for Ed Movement, Two Years In”
Jane McAlevey in The Nation: “This Massachusetts Nurses’ Union Is Reviving the Strike”
Eric Blanc in Jacobin: “The Teachers’ ‘Red for Ed’ Movement Is Far From Dead”
Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement by Jane McAlevey. Published in 2014 by Verso Books.
Susan Fergusan in the Pluto Press Blog: “Social Reproduction: What’s the Big Idea?”
Tithi Bhattacharya’s Edited Anthology Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. Published in 2017 by Pluto Press.
Joan Dash in The New York Times: “Marx’s Daughters”
Karen Olsson in Bookforum: “Revolutionary Road: A Biography of Karl Marx’s Daughter Speaks to the Dilemmas of Our Own Age”
Karen Holmes’ Eleanor Marx: A Life. Published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Paperbacks.
Ankica Čakardić in Historical Materialism: “Luxemburg’s Critique of Bourgeois Feminism and Early Social Reproduction Theory”
Wikipedia: 1975 Icelandic Women's Strike
Íris Ellenberger in Jacobin: “The Day Women Brought Iceland to a Standstill”
Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next (2015)
Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster.
Lisa Lerer and Sydney Ember in The New York Times: “Kamala Harris Makes History as First Woman and Woman of Color as Vice President”
Cheryl Ellenwood, Laura Evans, Raymond Foxworth, Carmela Roybal and Gabriel R. Sanchez in The Washington Post: “A Native American May Be Taking Control of the Cabinet Department That Has Shaped Native American Lives”
Ben Lefebre and Anthony Adragna in Politico: “Haaland’s Nomination for Interior Secretary Advances to Full Senate”
Nathan Rott in NPR: “Deb Haaland Confirmed As 1st Native American Interior Secretary”
A New Magazine of Feminism For The Masses: Lux Magazine
Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “Capitalism requires inequality, and racism enshrines it.” {The infamous quote, which surfaced mightily with the George Floyd Uprisings appeared in the film short: Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore}
The analogy of “Capitalism as a magnet” originally surfaced from Peter Frase’s Four Futures: Life After Capitalism. Published in 2016 by Verso Books.
Tammy Murga in The Signal: “‘Suffering in Silence:’ Single Moms Speak Out on Challenges Amid COVID”
KTLA: “Family Struggling After Moreno Valley Single Mother with 5 Daughters Dies of COVID-19”
Aimee Suzara in Pop Sugar: “The Pandemic Has Made Single Motherhood Even More Single”
The Hard Unrelenting Truth: 58% of all essential workers making under $15/hr are women. Explored in More Detail by Diana Boesch, Robin Bleiweis, and Areeba Haider in Center for American Progress: “Raising the Minimum Wage Would Be Transformative for Women”
David Graeber at the 36th Chaos Communication Congress in 2019: “Managerial Feudalism and the Revolt of the Caring Classes.”
David Graeber in The New York Review: “Against Economics”
Éric Toussaint in Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt: “Rosa Luxemburg and Debt as an Imperialist Instrument”
Hamid Dabashi in Al Jazeera: “Rosa Luxemburg: The Unsung Hero of Postcolonial Theory”
What Is Social Ecology? - A Comic Strip by Ad Astra Comix Explaining Its Origins and Ideas for Institute for Social Ecology.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Originally Published in 1962 by Houghton Mifflin.
Murray Bookchin’s "The Problem of Chemicals in Food" (1952)
Murray Bookchin’s article (above) was later expanded into a book under the pseudonym Lewis Herber: Our Synthetic Environment (1962)
Princess Mononoke by Hayao Miyazaki (1997). Produced by Ghibli Studio & US Distribution by Miramax.
Murray Bookchin’s “What Is Social Ecology?”
Third Nature Zine: Issue 2: February 2021
A. Philip Randolph Institute: “A "freedom budget" for all Americans; budgeting our resources, 1966-1975, to achieve "freedom from want."
Lilah Burke in Inside Higher Ed: “Most Adults Favor Free Public College, Pew Finds”
Sophie Quinton in Pew’s Stateline: “'Free College' Is Increasingly Popular — and Complicated for States”
Study International: “Majority of Americans Support Free College Tuition – Survey”
Yoni Blumberg in CNBC: “70% of Americans Now Support Medicare-for-all—Here’s How Single-Payer Could Affect You”
Democracy Now: “Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year”
Dana Gunders in NRDC: “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill”
Nina Lakhani & Maanvi Singh in The Guardian: “'No End in Sight': Hunger Surges in America Amid a Spiraling Pandemic”
World Health Organization: “World Hunger Is Still Not Going Down After Three Years and Obesity Is Still Growing – UN Report: More than 820 million People Are Hungry Globally”
Siobhán O'Grady in The Washington Post: “The Coronavirus Intensified a Hunger Crisis Last Year, but 2021 Could Be Worse”
Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone by Astra Taylor. Published by Metropolitan Books in 2019.
The Future Is A Mixtape: Episode 038: “Democracy or Death”
Can't Pay, Won't Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition. Authored by The Debt Collective with a Foreword by Astra Taylor. Published in October of 2020 by Haymarket Books.
The Future Is A Mixtape: Episode 036: “Debt Abolition: A Battle Plan For The Future”
Heather Steward in The Guardian: “Varoufakis Refuses Any Bailout Plan That Would Send Greece into ‘Death Spiral’” (2015)
Loren Balhorn’s Jacobin Interview with Yanis Varoufakis: “The European Union Is Determined to Continue Making the Same Errors It Made After 2008”