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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   32622 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?

What I find really hilarious about a lot of replies to both this thread and the original one is how many people seem determined to defend the honor of Karl Marx, as if it pains them to see people “misrepresent” his views.

You have me and FC and Arjin pointing out very specific quotes by people who are deeply immersed in Marxist discourse, who have studied the massive corpus of theory and commentary and praxis that have sprung up in the two centuries since Marx was writing (the kind of stuff you can find on marxists.org, for example), and who lay out very sophisticated explanations for why their work is a valid and important extension of Marx’s work, and people here are basically just saying, “Nope, you’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re doing. I know what Marx wanted better than you do.” It’s very reminiscent of the New Atheist era, where atheists would quote scripture at Christians and say, “I know your Bible better than you do. Jesus would hate you.”

Marxism has been an evolving umbrella of thought for a long time. Marxists, for all of their flaws, really do think very deeply about this stuff and talk about it, out in the open. I compared it to Christianity earlier, with the many splits and theological developments and infighting that has taken place within Christian thought, and nobody seems to have a good explanation for why this is not a valid comparison. There are plenty of individuals today who see themselves as church authorities, and who believe they are qualified to interpret, expand upon, and even advance Christ’s statements. It’s very possible that if Jesus were here right now to speak to us, he would set the record straight that some or all of those guys are wrong! But he’s not, so we’re stuck doing the best we can to figure out how to apply his ideas to a modern world that is profoundly different from the one in which Jesus lived. (What would Jesus say about artificial intelligence, or nuclear weaponry? We can only try our best to reason it out.) Marxists are doing the same thing with applying Marx’s ideas to a very different paradigm. Why is this so difficult for some people to accept? Why is it so important to you to maintain the belief that Marx only cared about economics?

I think you kind of miss the point. The people arguing that modern SJW ideology is descended from Marxism aren't wrong, but they are wrong when they think it's a direct and coherent lineage, and especially when some people seem to think that it's part of some grand master plan laid out by Gramsci and the Frankfurt school. (Or, going deeper down certain rabbit holes, a grand master plan by George Soros and Da Jooooooos!) Frankly, I think it is all fundamentally about resentment of the have nots against the haves, and this is essentially a parallel development. Marx built an entire economic theory around it, but without Marx, we'd still have people agitating for redistributive efforts and cutting down the tall poppies; they'd just use different labels.

Thus, arguing about whether "Cultural Marxism" is a thing or whether it's "really" Marxism seems pointless to me. Yes, "cultural Marxism" is a thing whether you call it that or something else; are "Cultural Marxists" actually trying to bring about a revolution of the proleteriat and the True Communism That Has Never Been Tried? Mostly not.

Most people (rightists and leftists) don't actually think about this very deeply the way us Motteian nerds do. The average SJW, including, I would wager, the chick who drew that "Kyriarchy" cartoon @FCfromSSC linked to, and the average right-winger railing about "cultural Marxism," cannot actually articulate what Marx espoused except in very general terms. The New Atheist/Christian analogy is apt; you're right that New Atheists smugly declaring they know the Bible better than the Christians they're arguing with were very obnoxious, but they were frequently correct.

The problem with the "Cultural Marxist" label is that it just reads as a cheap low-effort pejorative. "Commie" is still a dirty word in America, and calling SJWs "Cultural Marxists" reads as "Hurr hurr you commie!" It reminds me of right-wingers claiming every Democratic president ever was actually a communist.

There is of course a visible shift happening now where the left is using the same tactics to call every conservative "far right" and every Republican a "fascist." Boomerang back to conservatives claiming Nazis were actually leftists.

It's sloppy thinking all around, and while @FCfromSSC wrote a very thoughtful post tracing the lineage from Marx to Everyday Feminism, most critics don't and can't. (Freddie DeBoer, everyone's favorite anti-woke actual Marxist, is constantly driving himself crazy(er) trying to explain how everyone on the right and the left is Wrong About Everything.)

Yes, "cultural Marxism" is a thing whether you call it that or something else; are "Cultural Marxists" actually trying to bring about a revolution of the proleteriat and the True Communism That Has Never Been Tried? Mostly not.

The people who fit this description in the strongest sense believe that the Cultural aspect has superseded the OG economic analysis of Marx; mostly they probably don't think about that at all, or maybe endorse some sort of MMT in which debt doesn't matter and therefore needn't stand in their way. Not sure how much they think about their desired end-state either, but my impression is that it looks less like a dictatorship of the proletariat and more like a dictatorship of them personally -- maybe we can switch the name to "Cultural Stalinism"?

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