From - Fri Dec 14 11:05:44 2001 Received: from isis.univ-montp3.fr (isis.univ-montp3.fr [193.52.136.240]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA15933 for ; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 15:08:24 -0800 Received: (from sympa@localhost) by isis.univ-montp3.fr (8.11.0/8.11.0) id fBCN09427215; Thu, 13 Dec 2001 00:00:09 +0100 X-Authentication-Warning: isis.univ-montp3.fr: sympa set sender to ra-l-owner@univ-montp3.fr using -f Message-ID: <3C17E381.40D55383@loyno.edu> Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 17:08:49 -0600 From: Research on Anarchism Reply-To: ra-len@univ-montp3.fr Organization: Research on Anarchism List X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Research on Anarchism List , Research on Anarchism List Subject: Reclus and Gender Relations Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Loop: ra-l@univ-montp3.fr X-Sequence: 1181 Precedence: list List-Help: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: List-Post: List-Owner: Status: RO X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-UIDL: 07079a8902d595f073b2f2be1a98542e Here's an excerpt from a chapter on "The Critique of Domination." The request was for information on practice, but this might be useful as background. Reclus was extraordinary in that he didn't remain on an abstract level, but dealt with the actual position of women in society and with the real struggles of women. I don't include page numbers in some footnotes because they refer to manuscript page numbers in our own translation. Just as through most of its history the theorists of the left neglected the issue of racism, they also exhibited a very limited awareness of the central place of patriarchy in the system of domination. On this topic Reclus is also rather exceptional, for not only did he challenge the patriarchal system explicitly in his theoretical analyses, but--as is even more unusual in his epoch--he also attempted to put theory into practice in his personal life. In accord with his repugnance for all hierarchical relations, he opposed the concept of male dominance and sought to practice egalitarianism in his interactions with others. Furthermore, he rejected the traditional system of marriage, authorized by the Church and enforced by the State, as an institution based on power and coercion. In his opinion, “matrimonial trafficking” should be replaced by “free unions, based only on mutual affection, self-respect and dignity of others.”(64) He sees traditional marriage as part of a long history of patriarchal domination, which he traces back to ancient times when force and violence against women were institutionalized in order to reduce them to the status of property. Almost a half-century before Wilhelm Reich’s revolutionary analysis of the connection between family structure and political institutions, Reclus made strikingly similar claims. He argues that “it is certain that familial associations, whether manifested in polygyny, polyandry, monogamy or free unions, exercise a direct influence on the form of the state through the effects of their ethics. What one sees on a large scale parallels what one sees on the small scale.”(65) Though it is typical of anarchist theory to emphasize the strong determining influence of the state on all other authoritarian social institutions, Reclus is unusual in placing such a heavy emphasis on the powerful effects of family relationships on the state and social institutions in general. While not underestimating the evils of political coercion, he recognizes the greater force of psychological coercion operating in the context of the most intimate relationships. After noting the connection between the system of political authority and that prevailing in the family, he notes that the former is “ordinarily in lesser proportions, for the government is incapable of pressuring scattered individuals in the way that one spouse can pressure the other who lives under the same roof.”(66) One way in which Reclus breaks fundamentally with the mainstream of modern social thought is in his complete rejection of the division between the public and private spheres as autonomous realms. He believes that a free society can exist only if freedom is put into practice in the most intimate and personal details of life. In this view, he strongly anticipated recent interpretations of “personal life” as “political,” and calls for the “liberation” of “everyday life.” He shows himself to have been closer in some ways to the utopian communitarians than to most modern anarchist and socialist political theorists. For the utopians were among the few of his age to take such questions of personal life seriously, while more conventional political radicals usually relegated changes this realm to the period “after the revolution.” Reclus saw immediate and thoroughgoing changes in practice as necessary preconditions for creating a transformed society. He comments that “it is above all within the family, in a man’s daily relationships with those close to him, that one can best judge him. If he absolutely respects the liberty of his wife, if the rights and the dignity of his sons and daughters are as precious to him as his own, then he proves himself worthy of entering the assembly of free citizens. If not, he is still a slave, since he is a tyrant.”(67) In attempting to undermine the foundations of patriarchy and to demythologize it, Reclus goes back to the beginnings of human society. Reclus was unusual for his time in his willingness to recognize the powerful contribution of women to the origins of civilization. According to his revisionist account of history, the institution of maternity arises “in the midst of primitive barbarism” and gives “the first impulse to the future civilization” by uniting the members of primitive bands around the maternal hearth and socializing them.68 He believes that the role of women across the entire history of society has been vastly underestimated, both by scholars and in the popular mind. He notes that there is no lack of examples in history “of women who were veritable chiefs,” that “diverse tribes have recognized absolutely the supremacy of women,” and that “other tribes in which men have exercised power have adhered to the maternal family line.”69 Through such examples he seeks to destroy the myth of the universality and, by implication, the natural necessity, of patriarchy. Reclus argues that the significance of women in many social institutions of various societies has been vastly underestimated. One of the most important of these areas is economics. He notes that in societies where agriculture has been the prerogative of women, they have had “the useful role par excellence in the general economy of the tribe,”(70) and their labor has been the most secure source of food for the group. In such societies, “the general prosperity depends absolutely on capable management by the mothers, and on the spirit of order, peace and harmony that they introduce into the household.”(71) Furthermore, in these cultures, the feminine influence is decisive for determining the values of the group, as “the natural affection that they bestow on the children gathered around them develops into a kind of religion.”(72) Reclus also stresses the fact that, contrary to general misconceptions, women have often had a powerful political authority in such communities. “No decision can be made without their being consulted beforehand. As the absolute dispensers of familial fortune, they come to be the regulators of all social and political affairs. Although the males are stronger, they bow before the moral sovereigns.”(73) According to Reclus’ analysis, even if in certain societies functions that from our view seem to be of greatest importance are in the hands of males (e.g., even if the nominal “chief” is always male), this does not necessarily indicate male dominance. Even the exclusively male functions are subject to strong female influence, other functions of equal or greater importance are directly in the hands of women, and--what is most important--feminine and maternal values thoroughly pervade the culture. In his discussions of such societies, Reclus often refers to the “matriarchal family.” This is certainly a bit disconcerting, since he purports to make an “an-archic” critique of all forms of social domination, and yet we find him praising the superiority of another “-archy.” However, he sometimes recognizes that the concept of “matriarchy” leads to confusion if taken in its literal etymological sense. He observes that in the kinship systems so labeled, the mother does not actually “rule.” Moreover, he notes that the very significant maternal power that exists in certain societies has sometimes been compatible even with “brutality” by the father, and with situations in which he is “the incontestable master” of the family.(74) Reclus is not describing a supposed system of female dominance. He does not attempt, like some later misguided defenders of women, to discover some mythological “matriarchy” in which imagined matriarchal power is but the mirror image of historical patriarchal power. Rather, he seeks merely to show that patriarchy is not “inevitable,” that women have often exercised authority in the most essential areas of social life, and that in doing so they have been the most powerful agents of “progress” and “civilization,” in the best senses of those terms. In addition to defending women’s rightful place in history, Reclus vehemently supported their quest for social emancipation in his own day. In the strongest terms, he declares himself completely in accord with the feminist cause, asserting that “obviously, all of the claims of women against men are just: the demands of the female worker who is not paid at the same rate as the male worker for the same labor, the demands of the wife who is punished for ‘crimes’ that are mere ‘peccadilloes’ when committed by the husband, and the demands of the female citizen who is barred from all overt political action, who obeys laws that she has not helped to create, and who pays taxes to which she has not consented.”(75) In short, women are oppressed in the economic, social, and political spheres, and complete justice and equality must be achieved in all these areas. But while Reclus is in sympathy with all the goals of feminism, he does not approve of all feminists. He is disturbed that some middle-class feminists are concerned only with their own oppression and exhibit disdain for the working class. He laments the fact that they fail to see that “their cause merges with that of all oppressed people, whoever they may be.”(76) He finds himself in accord with more radical feminists, who do not hesitate to defend the rights of all. For example, he celebrates “the heroism of brave women who go to the prostitutes to join them in solidarity to protest the abominable treatment to which they have been subjected, and the shocking bias of the law in favor of the corrupters and against their victims.”(77) Reclus was far ahead of his time not only in seeing prostitutes as victims, but also in calling attention to the state’s complicity with the men who exploit these women. Another of Reclus’ views that has only recently begun to gain widespread sympathy is his firm belief that women are justified in striking back at their oppressors. He declares that as a result of the severe mistreatment to which they have been subjected, women have “an absolute right to recrimination, and the women who occasionally take revenge are not to be condemned, since the greatest wrongs are those committed by the privileged.”(78) Even today, few would defend retaliation by women except in the most extreme cases of abuse. We cannot know what Reclus would say of other times and places, but he certainly believed that in his own society the oppression of women was so brutal that overt rebellion was sometimes an appropriate response. He deplores the fact that the cause of women is usually dominated by well-behaved, conventional personalities (moderate and liberal feminists, we would say today) who make “a naive appeal to the legislators and high officials, waiting for salvation through their deliberations and their decrees,” when in truth “freedom does not come begging, but rather must be conquered.”(79) Reclus, like his great anarchist-feminist contemporary, Emma Goldman, thought that women could only advance their cause effectively through direct action--in both the personal and social spheres. (64) Elisée Reclus, “Evolution, Revolution, and the Anarchist Ideal” (65 Elisée Reclus, “The Modern State” (66 Ibid. (67 Ibid. (68) Reclus, L’Homme et la Terre, I, p. 254. This theme has now become commonplace in social ecological thought. Bookchin discusses it in general terms, following Mumford, who analyzed it at much greater length and with considerably more richness of detail in his account of domestication. See Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, California: Cheshire Books, 1982), pp. 52-54 and 57-61, and Lewis Mumford, Technics and Human Development [The Myth of the Machine, Vol. I] (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967), esp. Ch. 7, “Garden, Home, and Mother,” pp. 142-162. (69) Ibid., I, p. 255. (70) Ibid., I, p. 258. (71) Ibid. (72) Ibid. (73) Ibid. (74) Ibid., I, p. 270. (75) Elisée Reclus, “The Modern State,” (76) Ibid. (77) Ibid. (78) Ibid. (79) Ibid.