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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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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