Quotes from Maria Mies

If patriarchy had a specific beginning in history, it can also have an end

Now, after the material resources of the colonies have been looted, their spiritual and cultural resources are being transformed into commodities for the world market.

Peace in patriarchy is war against women.

The feminist project is basically an anarchist movement which does not want to replace one (male) power elite by another (female) power elite, but which wants to build up a non-hierarchical, non-centralised society where no elite lives of exploitation and dominance over others.

Now, after the material resources of the colonies have been looted, their spiritual and cultural resources are being transformed into commodities for the world market.

By focusing on the male violence against women, coming to the surface in rape, and by trying to make this a public issue, feminists have unwittingly touched one of the taboos of civilised society, namely that this is a 'peaceful society'. … The very fact that rape has now become a public issue had helped to tear the veil from the facade of so-called civilised society and has laid bare its hidden, brutal, violent foundations.

Feminists are those who dare to break the conspiracy of silence about the oppressive, unequal man-woman relationship and who want to change it.

Maleness and femaleness are not biological givens, but rather the results of a long historical process. In each historic epoch maleness and femaleness are differently defined. The definition depends on the principle mode of production in these epochs.

we should no longer look at the sexual division of labour as a problem related to the family only, but rather as a structural problem of a whole society. The hierarchical division of labour between men and women and its dynamics form an integral part of the dominant production relations, that is, the class relations of a particular epoch and society, and of the broader national and international divisions of labour.

We can say that the various forms of asymmetric, hierarchical divisions of labour, which have developed throughout history up to this stage where the whole world is now structured into one system of unequal division of labour under the dictates of capital accumulation, are based on the social paradigm of the predatory hunter/warrior who, without himself producing, is able by means of arms to appropriate and subordinate other producers, their productive forces and their products.

This covert or overt biological determinism, paraphrased in Freud's statement that anatomy is destiny, perhaps the most deep rooted obstacle to the analysis of the causes of women oppression and exploitation

The survival of the fittest' – the strong MEN – means that the conquerors, the victors, are always right. This is precisely the ideology behind the rape laws and rape myths. Are we unable to see that those who subscribe to this sort of science also subscribe to fascism and imperialism?

Too often the concept of nature has been used to explain social inequalities or exploitative relations as inborn, and hence, beyond the scope of social change