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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27933 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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Those are exactly the same things that, for instance, conservatives seek to obtain. Does that make conservatism a form of Marxism?

There is a sense in which feminism, among other priorities, seeks to redistribute various goods in society towards women, on the premise that the current distribution favours men in a way that is both unequal and unjust. But to say that that shows some connection to Marxism obviously proves too much.

I agree, but you'll notice that the comment I was responding to didn't say "Not all redistribution is Marxism." It said "What is feminism redistributing? Reproduction? Family? Male attention? Social status?", implying that it's ridiculous to say feminism redistributes anything material, or worse that the opposition to feminism stems from a desire to force them to reproduce. The implication itself would have been bad enough, but the immediate change of the argument upon the slightest amount of questioning is even worse.

Any movement advocating any action whatsoever is going to demand some kind of redistribution, because action is inherently redistributive - action requires resources, and resources need to be distributed from somewhere.

You're the one proving too much. Even within feminism, there were postulates that didn't require redistribution, like lifting restrictions on access to bank accounts, various trades, or property.

Well, if we go up-thread, I have been reading this whole conversation as being about whether it makes sense to describe feminism as downstream of Marxism, a species of Marxism, cultural Marxism, etc.

In that context I made the point that feminism is a much broader stream than Marxism, and much less ideologically coherent - Marxism has a clear central thinker, Marx, canonical texts, and so on, while those are more up-for-grabs in feminism. I then noticed that the most prominent or influential feminist texts of the 20th century that I can think of don't seem particularly Marxist.

ThisIsSin replied by saying "Feminism is redistributionist at its core, though", which I took in context as disagreeing with me. I don't think ThisIsSin was saying "feminism, like all political and social movements, is redistributionist" - I think he was saying, "actually, Olive, I think this is a significant similarity between feminism and Marxism".

In that context I think it was reasonable to ask what kind of redistribution he was talking about, and then to suggest that redistribution alone is not enough to constitute a significant similarity to Marxism.

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