The Sexual Contract

Rating:
Summary: Pateman is going after Loche, Hobbs, & the founding fathers!
Review: Hmmm. She given herself quite a hill to climb, and as usual does what she sets out to. I'm not a big fan of Pateman's, but this is surely one of her most important works. Her ideas challenge some of Western culture's core beliefs about individual freedom & our relation to the government, but Pateman plots her course & writes something worth responding to.

Rating:
Summary: Not much else like it
Review: This book is one of those singular works which takes up a kind of genealogy of the intellectual foundations of modern gender relations. Her critiques of the major Enlightenment political philosophers covers a lot of ground and does it well.

Implicit is a critique not just of the conservative and liberal tradition, but of the patriarchy contained within the Left as well. As usual, feminism provides some of the most sophisticated critique of Left organizational practice, not just in relation to women, but as a whole.

Obviously, one reviewer was looking for something a bit more right-wing. But her work her follows alongside her defense of ideas like a minimum income, which are not intended to 'make people work' (in a society where 'work' equals 'exploitation' and alienation, the struggle against the imposition of work is the struggle against inhuman conditions.)

Especially in relation to women, however, her position makes sense, since 'housework' is work, and work for capital at that, which goes unwaged. The struggle for a social wage is the struggle for recognition and against the imposition of the endless work which is capital's goal for women.

Some people may not like this book because they think that we have now found the best of all worlds, but the continued gendering of inequality, oppression and labor indicates that maybe its time for more fundamental transformations.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, Pateman's prose is horrible
Review: Written in difficult prose, Pateman's message appears to give the impression that women are the victims of the original political theorists. However, I must say one thing: Why is this book still noteworthy? I've met Pateman on many occasions, and I think it's important to know about her other (strange) political views. For instance, she believes in the "minimum income," which means that someone will be paid regardless of whether they work or not (that's a great incentive to work--not!); she also appears to believe that women are suffering incredible discrimination in today's workplace, which does not appear to be true. I'm not sure why she's considered such a great theorist. Great theorists, in my views, revolutionize how we think about society and promote productive policies that create economic growth, prosperity, optimism. That is not the case here. Sorry!