Leipzig Book Fair: For a future of solidarity

Radical hope instead of dystopian despair – after her first publication “Why women have better sex under socialism” translated into 14 languages, the US author Kristen R. Ghodsee has set out with her new book “Utopias for everyday life. A Short History of Radical Alternatives to Patriarchy” in search of the possibilities for fundamental change. She found what she was looking for: in ancient Greece, with the French early socialists and in numerous non-Western societies. Their guiding principle: happiness and prosperity for the many instead of ever greater wealth and power for the few.

Ghodsee writes that women around the world are being pushed back into old, outdated role models. The corona crisis acted like an accelerant: it was primarily women who were affected by job losses, who had to do more unpaid care work and were increasingly exposed to domestic violence. The US non-fiction author wrote her second book about new social concepts during the pandemic: They are intended to strengthen the role of women and, according to the author, men can also benefit from them. She had already postulated this in her first book.

Ghodsee looks not only at state solutions, but also at self-organized community experiments. The 400 pages of her book take readers to various regions of the world and across all eras of human history. It is a real tour de force from ancient Greece to Flemish beguinages, French early socialists, Israeli kibbutzim and current housing projects.

Living, working, upbringing and education are at the center of their anti-patriarchal approaches. For example, Godhsee’s chapter on the different education systems is well done.

She harshly criticizes the US education system and its completely individualistic approach. There is no value-neutral education, she writes, and offers the communes of the Soviet Russian reform educator Anton Semyonovich Makarenko as an alternative model. At the beginning of the last century, they collected young criminals, let them live and work with them, and at the same time taught them education. The educational successes of the Makarenko communes were based on mutual respect and appreciation of each individual and their work. The successes were so resounding that they became a model for training systems in many other countries.

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When it comes to early childhood education, Godhsee quickly comes to a fundamental criticism of the nuclear family model. Germany is the developing country when it comes to infrastructure. In hardly any other country is the idea that education is primarily the task of the nuclear family so prevalent. However, this is usually overwhelmed: time management alone requires the highest level of discipline; If economic pressure then increases, desperation and domestic violence often occur.

Things are even worse in the USA, where there is a real ideological worship of the nuclear family. Raising children successfully, on the other hand, requires – according to the motto “It takes a whole village” – community approaches and a lot of social support that goes far beyond the nuclear family.

Godhsee’s book is interdisciplinary and is based on sociological, anthropological, political and philosophical work by numerous scientists. We need more utopian thinking, writes Ghodsee. In a time of agony and backward-looking right-wing social concepts, we can agree with her without question. In some places, however, her suggestions seem somewhat schematic and idealistic, for example when she does not mention sexual abuse and violence against those under her protection in community educational institutions.

Nevertheless: This book is an overall inspiring contribution at a time in which a reactionary image of women, anti-queer sentiment and narrow-minded nationalism in right-wing politics are on the rise everywhere. Kristen R. Godhsee outlines numerous potential and already real milestones on the way to a non-capitalist, solidarity-based future without patriarchy.

Kristen R.Ghodsee: Utopias for everyday life. A Brief History of Radical Alternatives to Patriarchy. A.d. English v. Laura Su Bischoff and Ulrike Bischoff. Suhrkamp, ​​430 p., hardcover, €28.

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