While discussing the three themes that pervaded the New Left uprising in 1968, it is stated:

The third theme was that the Old Left movements had ignored the forgotten peoples -- those downtrodden because of their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their sexuality. The militants insisted that the demands for equal treatment by all of these groups could no longer be deferred to some putative future time after the main Old Left parties had achieved their historic objectives. These demands, they said, constituted part of the urgent present, not the deferred future. In many ways, the Black Power movement in the United States was the model example.

Lster, as part of the "what must be done" summary:

And through this all, we must put at the forefront of our consciousness and our action the struggle against the three fundamental inequalities of the world -- gender, class, and race/ethnicity/religion. This is the hardest task of all, since there are none of us guiltless and none of us pure. And the entire world culture that we have all inherited militates against this.

Granted, this is somewhat (actually highly) theoretical, but that is of a piece with the entire article.

short version: men broke everything and now lambert wants women to take the lead in fixing it all.

slightly longer version: you seem to believe that women are inherently different from men, and will therefore bring us a different [and surely it's got to be better?] world. but the differences, whether we're talking about sex or intellect or whatever, are not so clearly delineated. i'm 101% for nwp+era, but brooksley born, sheila bair, elizabeth warren, and hillary clinton notwithstanding, the world is full of smart, ambitious, capable, conservative women, any number of whom will not deliver the world that you are looking for.

...link dead ends at a "page not found." This link works for me but the url generated by clicking on the post's title doesn't. That url includes /blogs for some reason.

... and references The History Boys. To cut -- spoiler alert -- to the bonus punchline after the punchline:

RUDGE: How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another.

Shorter Wallerstein on inevitability.

A hmm, re: that last paragraph:

"This is the hardest task of all, since there are none of us guiltless and none of us pure. "

"The Impure + Guilty Need Not Apply"?

As Anatole France said, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Legal equality is often a cover for actual inequality. We're seeing it now in the Stupak amendment, which in its majestic equality forbids men as well as women to get abortions.

The French got it right -- equality is crucial, but is real only in a context of liberty and brother/sisterhood. The gender division is the foundation for other inequalities, which then feed back into and perpetrate gender inequality. We need to include every person's right to autonomy and self-determination. That will mean figuring out a different way to allocate resources.

Continuing to make property ownership or paid employment the means to adequate support of life and of full participation in the society perpetuates inequality. After all, there is work that is necessary for the continuation of society that we currently don't pay, particularly the reproduction of the next generation and the emotional work of psychologically stabilizing the citizens. The fullest attempt to deal with those issues that I know of is the Israeli kibbutz, which doesn't seem to have survived increased prosperity very well. And many if not most progressives are emotionally wedded to the concept of meritocracy, which I think results from long indoctrination in school -- I deserve more than you because I got better grades and a higher degree. That's the appeal of the 2)transformation from above approach of the Porto Alegre side.

I think there are a number of intermediate steps to take, which are good in their own right. First, reduce the inequality in access to resources. This would include virtually confiscatory marginal income and estate taxes at the upper end, and guaranteed social benefits for everyone.

Second, cut paid work time, by shortening the work day/week, having more holidays, longer paid vacations, and earlier retirement. And more educational time, both in terms of providing free college education and of significant educational leave throughout one's work life. The English trade movement benefited hugely from working man's education, and we should aim to support both up-to-date work skills and personal/civic education. The shorter work time, I should note, was attempted by the UAW in the 50s and 60s which foresaw that increasing productivity would reduce the number of jobs. They envisioned the productivity supporting the same number of workers at a better level of living. The combination of ramped-up consumerism and anti-union propaganda (lazy loafers who don't do an honest day's work driving up the price of your car!) killed that, but failing a collapse in productivity, the economy cannot generate enough jobs for the current everybody-works structure. If you're wondering how this is feminist, you're not looking at the division of unpaid work in the society and the way that long employment hours reduce women's autonomy and self-determination, nor at how they can increase the access of men to more resources and thus more power.

That's all I've got on a Saturday night.

[and where is sororité?]

there are sooooo many reasons to like france and the french...

nwp = national women's party
era = equal rights amendment

"And through this all, we must put at the forefront of our consciousness and our action the struggle against the three fundamental inequalities of the world -- gender, class, and race/ethnicity/religion. This is the hardest task of all, since there are none of us guiltless and none of us pure. And the entire world culture that we have all inherited militates against this."

Lambert said he reads this is:

"A difficult task is rendered easier by approaching its difficulties honestly, yes?"

Yes, I agree with that, what you said.

But I dunno about the rest of what he said. Are the three fundamentals really gender, class, race/ethnicity/religion? I certainly don't see gender bias being at the top of progressives' list. At all. Should be. But isn't.

If one is identifying sources of human suffering, one may as well go with the classic passion, aggression, and ignorance, no?

Apologies in advance for this hit-and-run comment, which will be mostly devoid of linky goodness, but I do hope to get back to this, as it's something I think about a great deal, but have no conclusive answers.

A great t-shirt I saw during the election said, "There's only one race, the human race; the rest is culture." Although I believe that with all my heart, culture is damned important, and probably most important in informing foundational stuctures of our society is gender culture.

Gender culture starts very young. I remember reading about a gender differences experiment where very young children (maybe 6 or 7 year olds) were playing a game where the reward was pennies. The researchers noticed that the boys and girls were equally good at accumulating pennies, but their goals seemed to be remarkably different. Basically, the girls would go after after a predetermined number of pennies, and be content with that number regardless of whether other people had as many or more pennies; the boys would keep playing all out with the goal of having more pennies than anyone else. The implications of this, that the genders tend to have different value systems, is far-reaching in economic terms if it is really a fundamental difference. This paragraph tends to echo the penny experiment, especially if you bear in mind that perfect competition can be viewed as fairness, or an even playing field, etc. which tends not to be valued in our culture:

Capitalism is a system in which the endless accumulation of capital is the raison d'être. To accumulate capital, producers must obtain profits from their operations. However, truly significant profits are possible only if the producer can sell the product for considerably more than the cost of production. In a situation of perfect competition, it is absolutely impossible to make significant profit. If there is perfect competition (that is, a multitude of sellers, a multitude of buyers, and universally available information about prices), any intelligent buyer will go from seller to seller until he finds one who will sell at a penny above the cost of production, if not indeed below the cost of production.

Other studies do seem to support the idea that women tend to organize themselves in flat structures that are democratic while men organize themselves (and others) in hierarchical structures that are more authoritarian. Pat Heim's the Power Dead-Even Rule bears out what many people of both genders observe everyday in many different contexts. Given that our culture is primarily male-dominated in just about every realm, it should come as no surprise that we are not particularly democratic, but instead rely upon hegemony and basic dominance:

The rise of a hegemonic power is the result of a long struggle with other potential hegemonic powers. It has been won each time up to now by that state which, for various reasons and by various methods, has been able to put together the most efficient productive machinery, and then to win a "thirty years' war" with its principal rival. Again how this is done is not our topic here. The key point is that once a given state finally achieves hegemony, it is able to set the rules by which the interstate system operates, seeking simultaneously to assure its smooth functioning and to maximize the flow of accumulated capital to its citizens and productive enterprises. One could call this a quasi-monopoly of geopolitical power.

Wallerstein repeatedly asserts that the current system is not sustainable and that a successor system is all but inevitable. This part especially caught my eye, as I've been thinking for some time that the Shock Doctrine could be used to put in place a kinder, gentler successor system rather than the usual fascistic disaster capitalism:

Before, however, one looks at strategies, one must note two crucial characteristics of a structural crisis. Because the fluctuations are so wild, there is little pressure to return to equilibrium. During the long, "normal" lifetime of the system, these pressures were the means by which extensive social mobilizations (so-called "revolutions") had always been limited in their effects. But when the system is far from equilibrium, exactly the opposite happens. Small social mobilizations have very great effects.

So what would that radically different successor system look like that is both relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian and how do we get there? I tend to agree with Naomi Klein that it would look a whole lot like democratic socialism rather than the current disaster capitalism. It's no surprise to me that Klein was brought up by a feminist. I don't think capitalism as we know it could even exist without patriarchy. How would the entire system work, or even have come about in the first place without the unpaid and underpaid work of women? Wallerstein notes an economic turning point around 1968 which seems to coincide with women entering the paid workforce in great numbers. As the Shriver Report details, women are now half the paid workforce, soon to be more than half. This has had a huge effect on our society, but has not fundamentally altered it since men still call the shots in the workplace and in government. The Thirty Percent Solution suggests we won't see a female paradigm emerge until women control 30% of the leadership positions. I think women will need to be represented at the same level as their demographics to bring about enough change to fundamentally alter the way we do things, but in this time of disequilibrium that 30% could steer us in a fundamentally different direction. Aren't 30% of the Senate seats up for grabs next year? That would be a great place to start for a coalition of single-payer+ERA+CEDAW. The parties comprising that coalition could be a mixture of single issue parties, or a big bloc of independent parties, but I think the bigger you get, like the former Big Tent Party, the harder it is to hold together over a long period of time, and the less effective it is.