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celebrating Maria Mie's life, work and feminism
for my English-speaking audience on the anniversary of Maria Mies' death
Dear readers,
Since I’ve been seen my English-speaking audience growing a little bit, specially with the help of Notes and
’s recommendation (thank you Julie!), I’ve decided to sometimes write some bilingual tracks, English only tracks and also translate some of my most interesting tracks for my foreign readers. If this works out, I will create a separate session so those who do not want to receive both English and Portuguese tracks could opt just for one or the other. Till I manage to do that, I ask for some patience with this temporary arrangement of mixed language tracks.Today, May 15th, marks one year since Maria Mies' death; her life, work and feminism is more relevant than ever before. As a way of celebrating her legacy, I bring you an excerpt taken from the Epilogue of her autobiography, written in 2008 and published in English in 2010, The Village and The World: My Life, Our Times by Spinifex Press.
This is her last book, which Mies decides to write not long after she discovers that her brain has several marks of dead cells. In the same period, she was dealing with immense difficulty in having any positive perspective after working on her last theoretical work, published in German in 2004, Krieg ohne Grenzen (“War Unlimited”). In her words (p. 300):
Since working on my book War Unlimited (Krieg ohne Grenzen, 2004), in which I examined the correlation between globalization and war, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to take on a positive perspective. Especially since the observations I made in 2004 had become more and more a reality: unlimited warfare within and without, against humans, nature and against life as such, and the transformation of all things into commodities to serve Capital God. Where has hope to be found in the face of the destruction of everything that lived? Working on this war book was too much: I got sick.
I discovered that reality is sickening and that having a strong sense of it is desperate in a world of make-believe; Maybe that is why more and more people are looking for ways to escape reality, vehemently denying it. We got rid of “until we make it” and retained “let’s fake it” (alluding to the jargon let’s fake until we make it).
At the beginning of the Epilogue for the Australian edition, written two years after the publication of the original title in German, Maria does not deny the lack of hope for the future, that is, her perception that we are increasingly distant from a good life, or, for those who speak from Abya Yala, sumak kawsay.
However, climate change has become exponentially evident and with very real consequences. Two events are remarkable for Maria: the earthquake that hit Chile in February 2010 and the cyclone Xynthia, which hit Europe, including Germany, in the same period. The organized revolt with transformative power would, or must, grow stronger.
Four years later, in 2014, Mies participated in the Jineolojî Conference held in Cologne and, I believe, rediscovered some confidence in the future, embodied in a guerrilla of women seeking to build a good life based on another philosophy, even amid a devastated land because, as Maria Mies observed, “when wars are carried out by men against nature and foreign peoples, it is the women who clean up afterward. Yet, we must not only make sure that life continues after a patriarchal war, we have to fight that such wars no longer take place at all” (2010, p.58).
Her legacy is alive and not just in the revolutionary guerrillas of Kurdistan. Maria Mies, with Claudia von Werlhof and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, was responsible for rescuing the similarities between Rosa Luxemburg's work in The Accumulation of Capital (1913) and German feminism in the 1980s. One of the highlights of the trio's theoretical analysis is the establishment of relations between the exploitation of women, Nature, and the global South (colonies and racialized peoples) in patriarchal capitalism based on Luxemburg's analysis of the permanent nature of primitive accumulation and, consequently, permanent violence as an economic fact.
Maria's work helps us understand, in all its complexity, the current moment of colonial expansion through wars against territories and our bodies-territories. As colonial war continues to rage with the help of the Empire, i.e. the US and Europe, against the people of the global South, whether in Syria, Sudan or Palestine, violent attacks on women's bodies are on the rise through the development of reproductive technologies, genetic engineering and transhumanism — the result of the development of the Technology of pillage, robbery and plunder made possible by the Science of Big Men. In addition to this extreme commodification of women's bodies-territories, we have the normalization of pornography, surrogacy, prostitution and violence against women and girls on the rise, especially sexual and domestic violence.
With all the spaces taken, it is necessary to create new ones, whether through the taking of Mars, the moon or the universe, cyberspace, the remains of the Amazon rainforest, or women's bodies. There’s no other way to do this colonial movement without direct and structural violence. The logic of plunder exposed by Mies becomes evident to the point of being indisputable when we observe the current epochal crises of capitalism. Only by knowing it we will be able to combat and overcome it while building a good life for all.
That is why, maybe more than ever before, during the unlimited and incisive war against peoples from all over the world and against women’s bodies, from Palestinians to Yanomamis, Maria Mies lives. Long live Maria!
Epilogue: The good life
When Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein asked me whether I would like to write an Epilogue to the story of my life and our times, I first hesitated. What could I write? Since I had finished my book in 2008, the world had not become a better place, quite on the contrary.
One crisis was followed by another: the hunger crisis, the oil crisis, the financial crisis in the United States, the breakdown of the major banks followed by a global economic crisis, earthquakes, and other catastrophes everywhere, as well as a series of unlimited wars. All of a sudden, poverty became a reality for many, in the rich countries as well. Slowly, people have begun to realize that life cannot go on as they have known until now. Already in 2003, Richard Heinberg had said so in his book The Party Is Over: Oil, Wars and The Fate of Industrial Societies. Many hoped that after governments spent billions of dollars and euros to save the global banks, things would return to “normal”, and some changes would be made that such a crisis would never happen again. But they saw themselves cheated. The banks continued with “business as usual”, the growth of money and capital remained as their only goal. Regulations are far and few between.
Not only for the poor, but even for those who so far have benefited from the global capitalist system, life did not go on as “smoothly” as before. Many committed suicide when they lost their jobs. In rich countries, depression has become a common disease. In Japan, for example, more and more managers of big corporations suffer from burnout because of inhumane conditions and constant stress. People call this “karoshi”. They are no longer able to work and support their families. The whole model of the “good life” propagated by the rich industrialized countries - the supermarket model, as I call it - seems to be breaking down before our very eyes. This model so far has meant more and more money, more goods, more and more expensive cars, bigger and more luxurious houses, and supermarkets filled with goods from all over the world. People thought their children would also be able to enjoy this “good life” forever, which is the main reason why they worked so hard, suffered so much stress, and tried to reach the standard of those “on top”. “Our children must have a better life” was – and is – the main justification for tolerating all one’s sacrifices.
Apart from this, we have known for some time that our countries' lifestyle not only destroys nature, the basis for all life on the planet, Mother Earth. Many people from all over the world, including in the USA, have begun to question this model of life in its entirety: its economics, its politics, its worldview and what it holds to be the purpose of human life. A friend from the UK told me that people in the USA have expressed their disillusionment in the following way:
We work and work,
we produce and produce,
we invest and invest,
we consume and consume.
But when will the “good life” come?
Those voicing these sentiments were not poor individuals from Asia or Africa. They were ordinary middle-class people from one of the richest countries in the world. Why were they not happy? Why did they not feel like their life was a “good life”? Was not their life the life that everyone in the world was striving for? All the countries in the world, even those which have continued to follow the socialist path or have been called the Third World were aspiring to reach the West’s standard of living. Why, therefore, are those privileged people not happy?
When I had began to ponder these questions, I realized that, in general, we in the rich countries are not living happy lives; that for many, our life is indeed miserable and meaningless one. A life without dignity and real joy. Most people in our countries will ask similar questions as above: “Where is the good life, and when will it arrive?”
I also realized, however, that it is easier to say what a bad life is than to define what a good one would be.
For years, I and many others have criticized the colonization of nature, of women and of the world’s poor countries. I have spoken and written about patriarchal and capitalist exploitation and oppression of people, particularly women. As an ecofeminist, I have long understood that the destruction of nature and of women is based on the same masculinist worldview. Namely, that the “good life” is not possible without “Man’s” domination over nature and the whole universe. (Have a look at what scientists do today to explore the universe). But then, what concepts do we have at hand to be able to define a good life differently? Many years ago, my friends and I had already formulated a new vision for what a good life could be: we called it the subsistence perspective.
What are, in summary, the main features of this new vision: its worldview and its economic, political, cultural and social features?
For me, subsistence means good life for all creatures in this world and good relations with all: with nature in her fullness. She is not our enemy, she is our mother, we are all children of Mother Earth. Men are not the masters of nature. The good life means we admire her beauty, her incredible diversity, abundance, wildness, power; her generosity, her creativity and her capacity to generate and recreate life. As women we share this creativity. We, too, can create life and make it grow. And we pass life on to our children. For me, and for most children, nature is a permanent source of joy. All good starts with the experience of this joy, the joy of being alive.
Such a worldview requires a new concept of economy, of society and of culture, and of politics and philosophy. This new philosophy of life will lead to better relationships between “us” and “others”. Instead of selfishness there will be generosity, instead of competition there will be cooperation. Instead of private property, there will be the communal use of the Commons (land, water, air, knowledge), friendly relations with neighbors and foreigners, cooperation instead of division into isolated, alienated individuals; speaking together, sharing joy and sadness. Subsistence means self-provisioning, mutuality, communality — no person is an island — sharing responsibility for the community and for the planet.
There is one thing that I consider absolutely necessary to create a new concept of the good life. It is the end of the alienation of work. Today, for too many people, work is seen as just a burden only. The good life is supposed to come after work, at night or on the weekend, during the holidays, after successfully passing this or that exam, after getting a car, or a house or at the end of one's working life, or in some sort of afterlife. But as we know, if this remains our philosophy about the good life, it will never come. For me, therefore, the good life must begin here on Earth: while we work, not after we work. We must enjoy the work process, the sensuality of touching the creatures we care for, children, the elderly, animals, plants. Or the materials we deal with while working, whether it is wood, vegetables, earth, iron, clothes or thousands of other things which we can touch. And not to forget the things we can't touch, like music, art, writing, thinking, discussing... Through this type of work, we also learn the skills and competence to live practically in this world; we learn “Lebenstüchtigkeit”. After all, we not only have a had, we are whole sensuous beings (like other animals). We want to know for whom we work for. We want to share the burden of work with others, as well as the result of our work. We do not want to do alienated work. Work is not only a burden, but enjoyment, too. Today, having a good life means, above all, an end to permanent stress and infinite pressure to do more in an ever-shorter amount of time. What we all need then is to slow down our pace — in Germany this is expressed as “de-speeding” (Entschleunigung). This “de-speeding” will not occur until we are able to say, “Now it is enough. I do not need more to live a good life.” The constant greed determining our lives—not just the lives of bankers—is due to the the fact that most of us never say “now is enough.” Enoughness is the secret of the good life. As Gandhi said: “There is enough for our need, not for our greed.”
The good life will not drop from heaven. We will have to create it, through self-provisioning (subsistence), self-reliance, self-organization, responsibility and care for others and nature. Such an economy and society will leave no room for today’s myth of permanent growth, money and unlimited accumulation of capital. As we know, this creed of permanent growth leads to unlimited wars.
And what will the good life look like at the end of a ones's life? I hope and wish that everybody on earth can look back on their lives and say, as my mother did, “Wasn't that a good life! Now it is enough. I’ll go.” Some may wonder if this figure of the good life is not a bit too rosy. After all, people have to work, and work hard, some under inhumane conditions to earn enough money to live. True. We have to work. The good life does not mean that we can sit under a tree and wait until the ripe fruit falls into our open mouths. We have to work if we want to live. And this work is often rather hard and exhausting. But the good life means that the burden of work is not separated from enjoyment, satisfaction, creativity and a sense of community, because humans must live and work together. As I said before: the good life does not come after work, but it must be part and parcel of work. The unhappiness of our modern societies steams mostly from the lack of enjoyment, both in our work and in our “free time”. This is why those cited above were not happy. They saw no sense, no enjoyment in their work. It was only taken on as a necessary burden to achieve a “better life”.
As I was pondering these questions about the good life in February 2010, two events took place simultaneously which had bearing on my own life:
1. The terrible earthquake in Chile on February 28;
2. the cyclonic windstorm Xynthia which raged across Europe and Germany, and also my village, Steffeln, where I had gone to finish my Epilogue.
These two events made it clear that I should give up my abstract search for a concept of the good life, for here Life itself was threatened. […] Before the good life can come, we must protect and preserve Life itself on this planet, our Mother Earth. […]