Chapter 16: Capitalism and Women

Any paradigm or system that aims at achieving the highest level of human happiness, well-being, empowerment and fulfillment in a Community that reinforces cooperative, synergistic interaction at every level for the good of each and of all, must value, support and empower each and every member of the Community.

Sadly and tragically, under many paradigms including Capitalism, women are devalued, underpaid, suppressed, marginalized, even brutalized. While Capitalism is not the only paradigm where this tragedy occurs, it is a dominant factor in its perpetuation in most industrialized cultures and countries. It is a well-known and documented fact that in most Capitalist countries, women are usually systematically paid less than men for the same jobs with the same experience and qualifications.

There is no logical or practical reason for this. In a culture where one's degree of freedom, respect, options, quality of life and very survival are directly proportional to one's financial status on the economic Pyramid, this pattern translates into a deeper and more pernicious default negation of the right to exist for women than for men.

Some employers attempt to rationalize this practice by arguing that women will likely have kids and not stay at the job long-term, or may be less able to perform their job functions due to menstruation, pregnancy or post-pregnancy leave. Yet men are not economically penalized when they are members of the military reserve, which directly translates into missing work on a regular basis with an increased likelihood of being killed or disabled in combat. Nor are expectant fathers penalized for their upcoming parental status, even though fathers may also need to take time off during their wives' pregnancy, birthing, and the early period after the baby's birth.

In other words, under Capitalist paradigms, women are penalized for keeping the human species alive, for guaranteeing our future.

Under Capitalism, employers are primarily concerned with profits, stock prices, market share and growth. If they perceive (whether accurately or not) someone as less serving those priorities even to a small degree, then they will devalue the employee. In their ideal world, employers wish for employees who will work long hours for little or no pay, or better yet in their view, machines which can do the job in place of human beings.

It is true that many of these attitudes and policies towards women originated from long-held cultural beliefs and customs that are independent of any economic paradigm. Yet, as with many other deleterious behaviors, when such attitudes meet a Capitalist paradigm, they become magnified, entrenched, perpetuated and set in stone, translated into norms that go largely unchallenged, just as all hierarchical social and economic paradigms magnify, institutionalize, legitimize and enforce the dysfunctionality and destructive proclivities of those at the top of the hierarchy. As discussed elsewhere, we now know that the very reality of being at the top of a hierarchy shuts down the compassion and empathy centers of the human brain after a time and activates abusive potentials.

Additional harm comes to women under Capitalist paradigms via other mechanisms as well. The constant pressure to come up with money to pay off the relentless denials of the right to exist, coupled with the lower pay frequently allotted to women, creates a situation that triggers many women to look for a husband who makes or has a lot of money. Marrying for money or security leads more often than not to relationships in which both parties are using each other rather than sharing in a heartful, fulfilling, authentic relationship. This scenario in turn contributes to human unhappiness, unfulfillment, and alienation, further entrenching a culture in which it becomes normalized and accepted for people to use each other instead of authentically relating to and sharing with each other.

Prostitution and the sex trade in general are particularly odious effects of Capitalistic paradigms. When people become desperate enough, they sometimes take actions to survive which seriously compromise, endanger, and degrade themselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and otherwise.

Deleting such attitudes from the mindset of a culture is a long, challenging process; but when we have mothballed Capitalist and other hierarchical socio-economic paradigms, the task will become much more attainable in the absence of being enforced and institutionalized by a power structure that coerces compliance under threat of loss of livelihood.

The culture that will naturally arise in the post-transition Community will be influenced and shaped by strong new reinforcers for cooperation, collaboration, mutually respectful synergy, and empowerment. There will be no reinforcers for bullying, abuse, exclusion or intimidation. Over time this will naturally tend to select against sexism, racism, and other dehumanizing attitudes and behaviors that plague much of the world today.

Where there is no hierarchy and no artificially enforced scarcity of resources, there is no motivation to try to be above others, no fear of being at the bottom, no worry about not being able to have freedom or quality of life, no reinforcers that would drive people to exert themselves to climb a nonexistent ladder. But for the best results in terms of human happiness and well-being, we will need to do more, and do it consciously and with wisdom and sensitivity.

The fundamental paradigm change after the Transition will greatly reduce enforcement and reinforcement of the devaluation and exploitation of women; but history and human experience show us that the economic, political, ideological or ethical social paradigm is only one of multiple factors that generate and perpetuate or discourage these attitudes and practices.

Examples are numerous.

The Soviet Union strove for and devoted considerable efforts to fostering a culture of unity and mutual respect among their numerous cultures for several generations, which did generate some progress. Yet, as soon as the Union dissolved, many pre-Soviet ethnic animosities resurfaced.

In the People's Republic of China, a major emphasis of the Revolution was parity and respect in every way for women, since pre-Revolutionary cultural attitudes towards women were among the most oppressive in the world. This was successful to varying degrees at the time. Yet when China instituted the one-child rule to curb overpopulation, female infanticide reared its bloody head to the point where at the time of this writing, the ratio of men to women is so out of balance that many heterosexual men cannot find a mate, since not enough female babies lived to reach adulthood for too long a time.

In the United States, generations of progress, from the abolition of slavery to women getting the right to vote, to the Civil Rights Movement, steadily advanced the principles of respect and equality for all. Yet at the time of this writing, we see an alarming resurgence of racism, sexism, Taliban-like religious compulsion in the name of “religious liberty”, neo-Nazi white nationalism, and the systematic deliberate acceleration of the feudalization of the economy.

Therefore, we dare not content ourselves with the degree to which these issues will naturally resolve as the result of the Transition to the new Paradigms. The status of women, ethnic, religious and racial dynamics and similar issues will shrink from mountains to foothills, but not yet to molehills.

Our goal in all of the new Paradigms is the fullest possible empowerment, valuation, actualization, happiness and well-being of every individual and subgroup in all of our diversity, in a synergistic dialog oriented towards expanding the quality of life for each and all. We seek to level the hierarchical mountains that stratify communities into haves and have-nots, empowered and disempowered, over-valued and under-valued. We must resolve and expect to work unceasingly to level these mountains completely.

We cannot achieve these goals by assuming that once we've achieved our Transition, we have solved all of our problems. Nor can we ultimately succeed if we suppress destructive norms and attitudes in such a way as to drive them underground where they would fester, feed on a self-perception of being an oppressed minority and be covertly passed on from generation to generation.

Even though such perceptions of being a persecuted minority are not based on reality, they are perceived and experienced nevertheless. The Nazis in Germany believed themselves to be the victims of a vast sinister Jewish-Communist conspiracy, even though they themselves were the ones in power. Those who formerly enjoyed privilege and power over others often feel oppressed and besieged when that status is removed. It is a variation of the emotional responses of any addict when deprived of the object of their addiction.

The full range of human attitudes and behaviors must be clearly visible if we are to successfully address those that cause harm and transform them into ones that nurture well-being. On the one hand, we will not thrive if we enable attitudes and behaviors such as bullying, demeaning or devaluing groups or individuals, abuse, violence, discrimination and similar behaviors. On the other hand, we cannot make progress if we drive them out of sight by criminalizing and suppressing them to fester unseen. We must strive for a delicate balance.

It will be no secret that one of the central principles of the new Paradigms after the transition will be to forge a Community on local and national levels which strives to empower each and every one of its members, with no exceptions, guaranteeing each human being unobstructed access to all goods and services, the right to participate in and contribute to the Community, each in their own unique way.

The primary organizational structures of all undertakings and enterprises will be peer-based and non-hierarchical. The degree to which individuals or groups will be able to express or impose biases, prejudices, exclusion or favoritism will be massively reduced from that possible under Capitalist paradigms. There will be no employers, landlords, nor lenders so there will be no way for people to block other people from access to living spaces, transportation, medical care, etc.

Of course a prejudiced individual or group of individuals can take bullying actions against those whom they would exclude, use derogatory language, attempt to physically block the objects of their hatred from accessing resources or places, and/or conduct smear campaigns, spreading lies about their targets, to turn others against them.

Such behaviors are, however, already illegal in most modern nations and states. People perpetrating discrimination, slander, assault, libel, or vandalism will be prosecuted under the applicable laws. If found guilty, perpetrators will be restrained from continuing these behaviors and offered treatment. Anti-discrimination laws will need to be strengthened and carefully, scrupulously enforced, regardless of who perpetrates such behaviors against whom.

Some such exclusionary racist, sexist, and nationalist attitudes are germinated, fed, and propagated under Capitalist paradigms due to the artificially perpetuated shortage and inaccessibility of everything. Living-wage or better employment, medical care, safety, education, living-space and everything else is kept in short supply. There is not enough to go around, by design. In such environments, individuals and groups are often pitted against one another.

The perception of "not enough to go around," tends to exacerbate the frictions and animosities between groups. It's all because of those <Jews> <immigrants> <blacks> <whites> <Armenians>, etc. that We are shut out of the best options, that We are suffering.

Such divisions are often based on the fact that one group or another tends to occupy the stratosphere of the socio-economic Pyramid while other groups tend to be relegated to the crushing depths at the bottom.

Women are frequently farther down the economic pyramid than their racial, ethnic, religious and national male peers. The Capitalist economic paradigm lends itself very easily to stratification, prejudice, exclusionism, cronyism, and similar phenomena. In fact, such divisions are frequently encouraged and magnified by those at the top in order to keep those at the bottom focusing their resentment upon one another rather than working together in unison to challenge and change the dysfunctional, oppressive economic paradigm itself. This is done so that those at the top of the pyramid will not be deprived of the objects of their addiction: wealth, privilege, influence, opulence, power over and control of others.

In the absence of these dynamics of wealth, power and control, these mechanisms of enforcement of harmful discrimination and bullying will be eliminated. All persons will have access to everything they want and need.

Resentments and distrust may remain as a carry-over from inequities experienced under Capitalist paradigms before the Transition. It will be important to encourage open public dialog. When nobody has control over another’s access to housing, food, transportation, education, or livelihood, then the mechanisms of exclusion will be largely absent. The behaviors will not be reinforced and will tend to lessen on their own. There will be no "overclass" and no "underclass."

Anybody trying to prevent another from accessing a workplace, distribution center, transportation nexus, or other site or resource will be dealt with as a bully perpetrating an assault. They will be guilty of a crime and will not be emboldened or backed up by any hierarchy or economic system.

Prejudiced people might refuse to work with those whom they hate. Unethical or racist doctors and other professionals might attempt to withhold services from those whom they dislike. Admissions boards might attempt to exercise discrimination in admitting applicants to educational institutions. We will need strict enforcement of laws requiring admission to be based entirely on ability and qualification, and such laws will have to be strengthened and taken with utmost seriousness. Some, such as law enforcement workers, may attempt to abuse the exercise of the more limited degrees of authority that will exist in the new Paradigms.

In order to curtail such abuses and prevent their mainstreaming, absolute transparency must be maintained. Any individuals or groups who perpetrate them must be removed from positions and roles where such abuses are possible. This must not be done in a punitive framework, but more in the spirit in which a person whose eyesight has been compromised or who has a seizure disorder may be prevented from driving, not to debase or punish them, but out of safety concerns.

One would not encourage or allow an alcoholic to work at a liquor distribution center or a drug addict to work at a pharmacy. In just the same manner, a person who is unable to overcome their prejudice against <women> <Muslims> <Christians> < Blacks> <Whites> etc will not be allowed to be in a situation where they can carry out their destructive compulsions. Individuals who exhibit aggressive and dangerous expressions of such beliefs will, of course, along with child molesters, rapists, and similar violent offenders, have to be physically restrained from committing such acts and offered every opportunity to avail themselves of the best therapy available.

We would do well to foster a lively public dialog about these topics. In that manner, concerns can be addressed and answered; progress can be made. "We suffered at the hands of those people" can be answered with "That is now a thing of the past" in a context where that is true. "We are downtrodden because They exclude us" will be shown to be outdated.

The only remaining, un-answerable and un-resolvable versions of these attitudes will be those based purely on ingrained prejudice and hatred. People holding such attitudes and beliefs will remain impervious to objective facts and demonstrable changes in the social dynamics. At that point, those who just plain hate another subgroup of the community with no reason other than pre-programmed hatred, will need to be addressed in the same way as other sufferers of potentially dangerous psychological disorders such as paranoid schizophrenia (which one might well argue that such "haters" are), psychopaths, and sociopaths. They will need to be prevented from doing harm without being debased or disrespected, with every effort made to give them the opportunity to reform through therapy. The Norwegian prison system is a good model to study in crafting a new approach and infrastructure to accommodate these situations.

While we are unlikely to ever completely eliminate all dysfunctional attitudes from the human community, the extinction of Capitalism and the establishment of the post Transition paradigms will empower us to reduce the prevalence of sexism, racism, divisive nationalism and ethnic friction from a festering wound to a pimple.

Such attitudes and behaviors can be expected to steadily diminish as generation after generation grow up in the new Paradigms as fully empowered, actualized individuals in a mutualistic, synergistic, cooperative Community in which none are blocked from access to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, nor any other right, resource, or basic respect. The benefits of the post-Transition paradigms will grow and deepen over time, just as the damage from Capitalist paradigms has grown and deepened over time. A Paradigm that is based on the reinforcement of the most positive, creative, beneficial aspects of human behavior will inevitably evolve into ever more enlightened forms and expressions.