Eve's Seed. Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History by Robert S. McElvaine

Author:Robert S. McElvaine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Published: 2018-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Hard Economics; Soft Politics:

Capitalism and Democracy

There is significance in the desire of modern economists not only to be "scientific" but also to make their science a "hard" one. By this term they mean that they engage in precise measurement and quantification.27 Hard is assumed to be "better" and "higher" than soft. The terms hard and soft have obvious sexual connotations. Moral philosophy, like literature, comes to be classified as ''soft" and therefore "feminine" and inferior. Real men, defining themselves in the dualistic notawoman manner, must be hard and scientific and think mathematically. When it is realized how much this sort of thinking permeates the modern world, it becomes clear just how much the modern worldview is based upon a "masculine" value structure that has been substantially intensified by the assumption that men must be the opposite of women.

Yet, in a great irony, this very male-oriented economics also finally wound up promoting greater equality for women. Because it is based on numbers, free-market economics sees every "one" alike, as a potential consumer and producer. Ultimately, women, too, had to be seen in the same way.

Democratic thinking followed a similar course. Few of the men who argued during the Enlightenment and the revolutionary era of the late eighteenth century that "all men are created equal" and for the "rights of man" had any intention of including women in their ideals of human equality. But their assaults on hierarchy began to undermine the model upon which other relationships of domination and subordination had been based: the presumed superiority of men to women. Political equality proved to be the greatest advance for women since the first backlash had reduced their status.

The importance of democracy in providing a substantial degree of equality for women would be difficult to overstate. The establishment of legal guarantees of equality served although obviously with only partial successto restrain men from using the physical size and strength upon which they had always depended to provide them with an advantage over women. By considering everyone to be equal, democracy reduces the opportunities in politics for those who crave great power over others, the human counterparts of the "Alpha males" in other species. Under the democratic ideal, the Alpha male will have no more "say" than the Omega maleor the Omega female. Democracy gives to those on whom silence had been imposed voices theoretically equal to that of the loudest (strongest) man. A political system that sees power flowing "from the bottom up" was bound to be of great benefit to those who had always been on the bottom.*

Democracy and capitalism fit together, but not in the way that is often assumed. The democratic doctrine of each person having equal political strength means that the amount of political power that a man (or, possibly, a woman) can accumulate is limited. This fact leaves those who traditionally sought dominance looking for another arena. The free market provides that venue. Under capitalism, the ambitious can compete in a contest in which the score is easily kept (in monetary units) and in which there are no limits on accumulation.

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