The expression of a ‘devil woman’ associated with the working woman is deplorable but not utterly incomprehensible. Indeed, in this regard, the working women of the subcontinent are quite familiar with worse terminologies and catcalls. Challenging the system even in western society where a “comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom” (Herbert Marcuse) prevails is not without consequences. The concept of devil woman in an advanced industrial civilisation is reminiscent of the vestigial relationships of a feudal era when women, akin to private property, were confined to the home. This only proves that a change in the means of production does not necessarily alter the relations immediately. This requires a conscious, rather an overzealous, struggle to bring any appreciable change in them. Eric Fromm has dealt with this phenomenon with extreme perspicacity. He says, “The character [relations] structure as it has been formed in the past by tradition, culture, teaching, family, etc., changes more slowly than the socioeconomic factors. Indeed, the slowness of the historical processes is, to a large extent, to be explained by the fact of this lag, that is to say, by the fact that man psychologically lives several generations behind the new economic and technical possibilities. If that were not so, the birth of a new society would not be as painful and difficult as it is.”
Japan, while completely imbibing the capitalist mode of production, is still carrying a loathsome heritage of feudalism. With the inherent flaws of capitalism, i.e. overproduction, loss of profit and unemployment, the state may not be feeling any necessity or urgency to overcome this ‘vestigial’ malady of the distant past. With capitalism in recession, women may have become superfluous for the productive process. Hence, reversion or regression to the family system once broken by capital may be the need of the hour. With a huge army of unemployed workers, capital needs excuses to eliminate one gender in favour of another. In conditions akin to these, such stigmatised titles come handy. The state takes the job of super-ego. Women can be coerced to pave the way for men through the force of feudal culture. By these tactics, the seething problem of unemployment can be temporarily cloaked.
The falling birth rate can be a serious problem for a nation that already comprises of an aging population but this enigma can be attributed to multiple factors. It can be related to perversions, which themselves are an expression of a rebellion against the subjugation of sexuality to the necessity of procreation. A revolt against the system that limits pleasure to the performance principle! In other words, it is in opposition to parental domination, a return of the repressed, which tends to prevent the reappearance of the primeval father and his domination.
In today’s world, this is replaced by the domination of society. In the world of capital, instinctual freedom can be claimed by refusing to procreate or by inhibiting the sexual process altogether. This also characterises the rejection of guilt, which is the consequence of sexual repression imposed by posterity, especially on incest. Procreation could be important for the survival of the human race but it has nothing to do with one’s libidinal satisfaction. Eros restricts itself to the love of two human beings. It is least interested as far as its consequences are concerned. According to Freud, “The conflict between civilisation and sexuality is caused by the circumstance that sexual love is a relationship between two people, in which a third can be superfluous or disturbing, whereas civilisation is founded on relations between larger groups of persons. When a love relationship is at its height, no room is left for any interest in the surrounding world.”
Most of the reasons advanced by people such as Nicholas Eberstadt are least cogent. The argument related to the lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family does not seem to hold. Religion is likely to play this role (if at all it can exert any influence) only in pre-capitalist areas where backwardness and illiteracy are rife, and uncertainty of every hue is rampant. The Oceanic feeling “is a wish fulfilment, related to the child’s egoistic need for protection” (Sigmund Freud). For civilisation, religion can be of vital interest since, in human beings, it too invokes a sense of guilt. Contrary to Eberstadt’s claim, lack of religious authority should have helped the Japanese people revoke this guilt. Instead, they are yet to find their freedom from this sadomasochism. The super-ego is exacting a heavy toll from them for the crimes they have never committed.
The laws of religion and civilisation based on the market are identical in at least two aspects: both create uncertainty and sense of guilt. “Laws of the market like God’s will are beyond the reach of one’s will and influence” (Eric Fromm). During calamities, the law of survival of the fittest takes precedence, which automatically leads to the proliferation of the populace. The last but least stressed factor related to economics is phenomenal, which certainly has its effects. There exists another important aspect to this conundrum. The ‘postmodern’ or highly skilled capitalist economy of Japan does not need an unskilled reserve army of unemployed workers, although capitalist accumulation itself produces a surplus population. According to Marx, “[it] constantly produces in direct relation to its own energy and extent a relatively redundant population, that is, a population, which is superfluous to capital’s average requirements for its own valorisation and is therefore a surplus population.” The working population produces capital, its means and its accumulation but, in punishment, makes itself superfluous. It seems as if, in the interest of capital and its valorisation, the proletariat remains ever ready for its own exploitation. One can relate this phenomenon to the guilt complex but capital as per its dynamic knows how to get rid of this surplus as well. Engels states: “Private property has made man a merchandise whose production and destruction depend only on demand, and that competition has slaughtered and every day slaughters in this way millions of men.” For the fear of getting slaughtered through the performance principle, the Japanese might have opted not to produce further generations any more. Eros does not demand procreation, hence, under surplus repression, reproduction may have lost its remaining importance as well.
(To be continued)
The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at [email protected]