Violence against women
Jess Moore's article (GLW #815) on poverty and domestic violence misses the point.
Increased financial uncertainty is associated with increased levels of domestic violence. Understanding this fact does nothing to help comprehend why so many men vent their anger by committing violence against women.
Combating violence against women requires an understanding of its cause. An important source of the violence is the legitimacy this violence receives through women's subordinate role in the family.
Women's role in the family is to both give birth to the next generation of workers and to be the primary care givers for current and future generations of workers. This role massively reduces the cost for capital to maintain a functioning workforce. This subordination of women within the family helps to legitimise violence against all women.
Moore is correct to pose women's full economic independence as essential to their liberation. However without a collective struggle to overcoming the misogynistic attitudes that dominate capitalist society, women achieving economic independence could only help women escape violence from men by enabling women to more effectively withdraw from contact with men.
Chris Latham
Fremantle, WA (Abridged)
Costs of nuclear power
I can't believe that in this day and age there are environmentalists who still think nuclear power is good or necessary for humanity.
I agree with the anti-nuclear statements already put forward in GLW, but one issue I haven't seen is the astronomical costs involved in building nuclear power plants.
The cost of commissioning and decommissioning these plants runs into the tens of billions.
The burden of these costs is placed on taxpayers, while private nuclear industry can make mega profits (usually to the detriment of safety and working conditions).
Barry Brook (GLW #815)also raises a somewhat defeatist position on power usage. Even though he says "we can clearly cut back on wastage" he continues later with "there is no realistic prospect of even reducing traditional power demand."
Well, there is an absolute necessity to reduce overall and per capita power usage, notwithstanding that underdeveloped countries have the right to raise their living standards.
All environmentalists need to campaign to stop extravagant and wasteful power usage that is built into the capitalist system.
Stefan Skibicki
Dapto, NSW (Abridged)