Sunday, December 23, 2018

Alexandra Kollontai Meets Hillary Clinton

Is Hillary Clinton a perfect example of the bourgeois pseudo-feminist described in this quote from Alexandra Kollontai?* It seems the corporate wing of the Democratic Party that she (along with Schumer, Biden, Pelosi and their allies) represents is utterly incapable of truly representing the interests of working-class women (let alone men) [excuse the binary classification]. The working class vote for Trump is mainly due to the underdeveloped understanding of class consciousness amongst working people [which it is the duty of Marxists to try to correct, and not by uncritically supporting right wing and "moderate" Democrats in the name of defeating Republicans]. Unless Marxists can find a way to radicalize the consciousness of the working class, without compromising opportunistic short-term tactics, the capitalist 1% will continue its rule by playing musical chairs with the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties while Communists and other progressives will continue to play second fiddle to the bourgeoisie.
*"Class instinct – whatever the feminists say – always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of “above-class” politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their [proletarian] “younger sisters” are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the “rights of all women” become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some “general women’s” principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful.
— Alexandra Kollontai (1909), The Social Basis of the Woman Question,"

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