Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 11' Part One. Feminism Didn't Bring On Socialism.

   Feminism Didn't Bring On Socialism.. Part One by Dave Jaffe.






       Jackie was a young cheerful revolutionary back in the mid-1970's. She's become an ardent feminist and had high hopes for this new movement. "Capitalism," she told a friend of mine, "will never be able to resist the power of feminism. The feminist movement will lead to socialism." But my friend Dick had a more subtle grasp of history.
      "I'm not sure about that," he said. "Capitalism is very flexible and has absorbed lots of past movements. Don't ever underestimate the power of the capitalist system." On this exchange as on many others he'd been involved in, Dick was right and Jackie was totally wrong. In fact in the past 45 years or so, the capitalist system and its right wing advocates have swept the board.
       In the 1980's right wing governments popped up in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and splintered into 15 separate republics. All of them ditched socialism. The former eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union won their freedom, or so they thought and quickly moved into NATO and joined the capitalist system. By the mid-1980's the People's Republic of China had ditched hard core Maoism and embraced the profit system. "To get rich is glorious," former hard line Maoists said in China.
   Now the move to the right has hit western European countries. Social democratic parties in France, Italy, Germany and Austria are losing millions of their voters to extreme right wing anti-immigrant parties.  Emmanuel Macron, a former social democrat and now president of France has embraced a rigid anti-immigrant posture. He has also made massive cuts to social programs.
  In the United States, Donald Trump, the incredible demagogic president from New York City heads a government that has trashed most of his country's social programs. He has also put through the country's Senate and House of Representatives a bill that gives him and his rich friends a massive tax cut. Great Britain is wrestling with its dilemma over Brexit.. "No matter how Britain leaves the EU" one friend of mine who worked in antipoverty groups in Britain said, "many British people especially the poor are bound to suffer."
   My friend Dick died many years ago. The last time I heard about Jackie she was working in Texas leading a unionizing drive among women workers in a slaughter house. I wish her well and hopes she succeeds in her organizing. These days I often tell people, "Never underestimate the power of capitalism." Dick is dead but his words are still impressed in my mind. Maybe even she remembers Dick's warnings. Somebody's got to.