Red Flag over Torbay – When the Dust Settles

The masses of people who live on housing estates of Torbay are hidden away from the view of the tourists on the seafront, and live in abject poverty. As they have no voice – they appear not to exist. This non-existence is designed to keep a stock of potential workers handy should the need arise – whilst simultaneously preventing them from gaining an education and accessing adequate employment and political power. Although there are obviously more workers in Torbay than the bourgeoisie (i.e. middle class), they appear not to exist because they lack any means to access the bourgeois system.

Last Train Home (歸途列車) Film Review

Despite many permanently resettling in the cities, and abandoning their farm land, it is estimated that around 130 million migrant workers make the trip into the cities, whilst older and younger members of their families stay on the farm land and look after the home. This army of migrant workers spend 50 weeks of the year working in factories that provide living quarters and regular food to their workers. It is only during the two-week holiday of Chinese New Year that the factories shut-down and the employees are allowed home.

The Bourgeois State and Feminism

Bourgeois feminism is very different. This is the feminism of the middle class, and already socially privileged women. These women, as wives of the rich and famous, have had historically a remarkable amount of leisure time and relative freedom compared to their working class counter-parts. This apparent ‘freedom’ exists only within the framework of an unquestionable bourgeois patriarchy. It is freedom at a cost and the cost is humanity living free of oppression. Middle class women have had access to a greater array of educational facilities, be they teachers, books, or academic instruction. Middle class women fought for, and finally secured the vote because their privileged socio-economic conditions allowed them the insight to see partly beyond their own negative conditioning. Bourgeois feminism is nothing more than the exercise of political compromise as whatever concessions are granted to a middle class woman, they can not be allowed to directly challenge or alter the essential framework of the bourgeois exploitative state. Exploitation and class difference must be allowed to continue unopposed, in the old way.

1 405 406 407 408