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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35004 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Suppose there is a person who is very concerned with social justice. They believe that racism and sexism are among the most serious problems facing our society, they are deeply committed to battling the kyriarchy hydra. They are interested in cultural critique, in sociopolitical theory, and have educated themselves extensively on these subjects. In my experience, such people are not particularly rare, and probably most people commenting here will have encountered several of them.

Based on you experience, how likely is such a person to be familiar with and use the term "late stage capitalism"? My experience would be that it is very likely; does yours differ?

If they do use that term, what do they mean by it?

Why does the kyriarchy hydra in the linked comic have a "class" head, and why is that head resolved into "economics" in the last panel? What sort of economics do you suppose the author intended?

That comic is from the website everydayfeminism. If I search that website for references to "capitalism", I get many, many hits. How many of those hits do you suppose involve discussion of Capitalism as a positive force in the world, versus a negative force? Why should that be?

....I've just searched "Patriarchy and late stage capitalism".

Having previously identified the socialization and naturalization of inequalities, we now look at the influence of capitalism. Although patriarchy pre-existed it - many societies were already characterized by a sexual division of labour, gender-based violence, or gender norms often privileging the male - the specific contribution of capitalism was undoubtedly the institutionalization of the devaluation of women and their work. The devalued or even unpaid domestic work, the concept of the “housewife” that accompanies it, as well as professional segregation, have their origins in the era when capitalism gradually replaced the medieval feudal system. They are thus not, as we often hear, the remnants of a dark and barbaric medieval era, but rather constitutive of the first phase of capitalist accumulation which, as we shall see, led to a phenomenal regression in the status of women.

Judging by this excerpt (or the article as a whole, I'm not your dad), what general branch of political philosophy do you think has formed the author's worldview?

The dominance approach to feminist theory arises out of a Marxian background that models gender difference on class relations. The relation between manager and worker is not just one of “difference.” The manager and worker are situated within a system of social relations that unequally distributes money, power, status, etc. Likewise, men and women aren’t just “different,” but are categories of persons – like manager and worker – that are defined in terms of social relations that position them in a complex class/race/sex hierarchy. Given this background to the dominance approach, it is useful to consider a bit of the history of the relation between Marxism and feminism.

What do you think the author means when she says that "the dominance approach to feminist theory arises out of a Marxian background"? What does it mean to "model gender differences on class relations?" Why do you suppose the author spends so much of their paper discussing Marx? Why does she believe that "Socialist feminism involves a commitment to “the practical unity of the struggle against capitalism and the struggle for women’s liberation." Why is she interested in a struggle against Capitalism, and where does Marx come in to this struggle?

This article argues that modern imagery of the Black female body exists in opposition to sexual health and sexual rights by focusing on existing representations of Black female eroticism as a legacy of colonialism. It addresses Black feminist thought on the history and contemporary use of the Black female body and offers a human rights perspective on uses of the Black female body within patriarchal capitalism.

Where is this idea of "Patriarchal Capitalism" coming from? Do you think the author developed it herself? If not, how did she come by it?

Contemporary feminism is currently at a crossroads, facing a concerted onslaught from both neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies. While these ideologies are inherently different—neoliberalism often appropriates feminist language to serve capitalist ends, and neoconservatism typically attacks feminist principles—they similarly reinforce the traditional role of families as providers of welfare. This crisis of alienation in feminism is characterized by three key factors: the gender divisions brought about by feminism’s shift to identity politics, the obscuring of feminist critique of capitalism by the spread of commercialization, and the instrumentalization of feminism in politics. These challenges have resulted in increased class antagonism and the further marginalization of lower-income women, reinforcing one another. To address this multifaceted crisis, a return to Marxist thought is deemed necessary for women’s liberation.

How can Feminism "return" to Marxism, when it never had anything to do with Marxism in the first place?

Anxiety disorders are one of the most prevalent mental disorders globally, and 63% of those diagnoses are of women. Although widely acknowledged across health disciplines and news and social media outlets, the majority of attention has left assumptions underlying women's anxiety in the twenty-first century unquestioned. Drawing on my own experiences of anxiety, I will the explore both concept and diagnosis in the Western world. Reflecting on my own experiences through a critical feminist lens, I will investigate the construction of anxiety as mental disorder in the context of neoliberal late-stage capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and biomedical psychiatry.

Where does the idea of "Late-stage Capitalism" come from? What are the other stages?

The term “late capitalism” regained relevance in 1991 when Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson published Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Drawing on Mandel’s idea that capitalism has sped up and gone global, Jameson expanded his analysis to the cultural realm. His argument was that late capitalist societies have lost their connection with history and are defined by a fascination with the present. In Jameson’s account, late capitalism is characterized by a globalized, post-industrial economy, where everything – not just material resources and products but also immaterial dimensions, such as the arts and lifestyle activities – becomes commodified and consumable. In this capitalist stage, we see innovation for the sake of innovation, a superficial projected image of self via celebrities or “influencers” channeled through social media, and so on. In this time, whatever societal changes that emerge are quickly transformed into products for exchange. Unlike those who celebrate postmodernism as replete with irony and transgression, Jameson considers it to be a non-threatening feature of the capitalist system in contemporary societies.

How can Marxist analysis "expand into the cultural realm"? If the term "late stage capitalism" were related to attempts to expand Marxist analysis in this fashion, would the prevalence of the term be some level of evidence for the memetic spread of this expansion?

...In my younger days, this is the point where I would drink several cups of coffee and spend the next twelve hours pasting the first paragraph and a few pertinent questions for every one of the first five hundred search results in the fifteenth tab in my brave window and then wrap it up with six solid pages-worth of compact, four-letter obscenities, but I'm older and I have kids now and my back hurts, so let's not do that.

It seems obvious to me that the various branches of Social Justice theory are, to a first approximation, direct descendants of Marxism. It seems obvious to me that a supermajority of the people promulgating Social Justice theory believe that they are performing some combination of extending, expanding, or (for the truly arrogant) correcting Marxism, quite explicitly. I think the above position can be defended unassailably by looking at the academic output that constitutes the headwaters of the Social Justice movement. I think that those who argue that the obvious, inescapable ties between Social Justice theory and Marxism are some sort of hallucination or sloppy categorization are either woefully uninformed or actively dishonest. To those who have advanced such arguments in the thread on the subject below, I offer an invitation: assuming the above examples are insufficient, what level of evidence would satisfy you? How many papers from how many journals do you need to see? How many quotes from how many prominent figures within the modern social justice movement, and the people who taught them, and the people who taught them, and so on? How far back do we need to go to satisfy you? How deep do we need to dig to bring this question to a conclusion?

Or maybe I'm totally wrong. Let's run with that. If I'm wrong, if the above is the wrong approach, why is it wrong and what would be better?

I don't think you are wrong though but orthodox marxism can be overstated as part of all modern woke types and helps woke capitalists get away with it. I do agree that cultural marxism has expanded from class towards the cultural realm. We should just not underestimate Woke capitalists who are also for cultural marxism and moreover Cultural Marxism is compatible with some version of managed capitalism that accepts its ideology.

For example BLM, a black marxist group created by a Jewish marxist who was part of the weatherman underground group, managed to get enough capitalists to support its agenda to hire non whites over whites.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-09-26/corporate-america-kept-its-promise-to-hire-more-people-of-color

So capitalists actually collaborated with a marxist group. Which is why you aren't wrong, it is just the issue that we shouldn't forget the cultural Marxists who also see their version of capitalism as helpful to their project.

There is a certain woke, pro capitalist in theory who opposes OG marxism, at least in theory but they still have the cultural marxist agenda. Of course, in reality they compromise with a movement which has included plenty of marxists among it. But this exists. The compromise with marxist organisations does undermine some of their anti marxist credentials.

Are these people cultural marxists? Of course, even someone who isn't orthodox marxist, can be a cultural marxism by applying the marxist logic without prioritizing class.

The activist groups and movements that rose in the 20th century in the USA especially are very important parts of it. But of course such movements had plenty of Marxists involved too. Cultural marxism does come from the original left and original marxism had those elements too, and that is why opponents of it also raised some of the same concerns.

Someone who is a marxist in general can be a cultural marxist too. There are plenty of those who also argue that redistribution in the cultural marxist arena is anti capitalist and a fulfillment of Marxism. Kendi IIRC is one of those types. This is indeed a very important element of it. But cultural Marxists are not about prioritizing the working class but primarily about favoring in western societies progressive identity groups like women, Jews, Blacks, migrants, Muslims, Indians, etc, and against right wing, white, conservative, nationalist, men. And also adopt the ideology of the diffusion of national, conservative, and gender roles and values of groups, especially of their outgroup.

Business owners can share this agenda and agree with it ideologically, and some do this also in part due to a profit motive. For example, they benefit from a system where the goverment pays for welfare, and support the importation of cheap labor. They can agree with the cultural marxist, and general marxist agenda of the idea of dissolution of gender roles, tradition, native nation, because they prefer so much so for women to work over being mothers, even if that would harm society and lead to unsustainable low fertility rates. Or they are part of the DEI industry and there is an obvious profit motive there.

There can also be a resistance to some elements of cultural marxism that partly has some economic leftist elements which show some nationalism, even though cultural marxism comes usually with an economically leftist redistributist package. There have been some leftists who opposed open borders and high numbers of migration on basis of prioritizing the well being of their own working class. Usually they did this while also expressing that they have solidarity with foreign working classes. More of the left pushed the opposite agenda and even most of those who opposed it have went along and changed their tune. Still this has existed.

Cultural revolution in favor of an economic model as the priority can coexist with both communists and people who want to promote their more capitalist economic system, although they too as we observe tend to be ideologically aligning with the idea of screwing "oppressor" groups in favor of "oppressed" and playing motte and bailey games between economy as only allowed concern for the outgroup and then accepting as legitimate concerns of the cultural marxist sort.

The idea of an utopia coming out of destroying the distinctions, or the actual nations, racial, property rights, classes, borders, religions, nuclear family, gender roles, usually with some groups and categorizations targeted as reactionaries than others can exist also among woke capitalists, who are cultural Marxists and have definitely been influenced by the intellectual legacy of Marxism and share elements with OG marxism. And I do agree that actual self identified Marxists have been influential in the cultural marxist movements.

Just adding some of the nuances of the issue, so we don't let woke capitalists get forgotten as part of the issue of Cultural Marxism.

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