Coming from a country that still has a monarchy(!), the concept of anarchy is actually pretty cool - all it means is 'without a ruler', after all, & that is surely the wish of all freedom-loving peoples the world over. The dream of democracy, the dream of socialism, & the dream of anarchy all came about as blueprints for possible ways of re-ordering society after the removal of the monarchy, & actually have huge amounts in common. They have only come to be enemies because of the machinery & ideology that sprung up around them once the dream had been written down. It happens in politics as it happens in religion, as it happens in all closed, dead systems, once the thinking (& questioning) has stopped.
Most of my adult life I've moved in anarchistic, 'progressive-thinking' circles, working for what I hoped was the common good alongside people I thought were seeking truth the same as me & wanting the best for all. One of the hardest things I've had to wrestle with since taking the red pill has been the realization of how all left-wing political thinking - which I otherwise see many benefits of - is utterly rotten with totalitarian feminist dogma. And feminism is, after all, a hate movement. So you see my problem.
There is no space for any kind of debate upon whether feminism is a beneficial force within an anarchist or socialist forum, which is sad because it is those people, more than any others, the people wanting most passionately & generously to bring about change, that I would most like to speak with & help develop a new, post-feminist language of the sexes.
My present position is that anarchistic principles can work - I've seen them work - on a small level, within groups of a few hundred people, but to implement them on a national level is very likely unworkable. I tend to think the ideal would be to have small groups - tribes, really - of self-governing peoples who interact democratically on a national level, with one spokesperson representing them at yearly/monthly meetings etc. Really not too far from the dream of American democracy, when you think about it, just with less of the heinous, bloated corruption & capitalistic greed that ruined humanity's greatest stab yet at utopia.
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Thanks for the link!
ReplyDeleteCurious, do you have any recommended reading on Marxism? I have minimal education on it - likely why I linked feminism to socialism/anarchism depending on the seperate parts of society they're in.
Leap,
DeleteNope, I'm fairly unschooled in that area, maybe just wikipedia it for some kind of unbiased overview. Like feminism, I think it's one of those subjects you can make your own mind up about once you know the basics. Once you get sucked into either of those things as a field of study, there's just too many books out there & you'll end up losing perspective. Well, I would, anyway.
Feminism most certainly adopted Marxist principles. You're correct in asserting that the word "gender" can simply be substitutedfor "class" and the theory simply applied as feminism instead of Marxism, at least on a basic level. but it's a bit simplistic. Feminists had to jump through a lot of mental hoops to justify their theory. Marxists did not.
ReplyDeleteIn order to sell patriarchy theory, feminists had to re-interpret the history of male-female relationships as the oppression of women. since these relationships had always been cooperative and beneficial to both, this was not an easy task. It is also the reason feminism became a hate movement. For women to become an oppressed class, there had to be an oppressor class and that class had to be demonized. Thus misandry is inherent in the ideology and inseperable from it.
Unfortunately this hate movement has hijacked true liberalism. Nearly all of the destructiveness seen in liberalism today is the product of the feminist movement. While I am not and never have been a Marxist, I have often thought that Marxism might result in a more fair and just society than what we have today. Unfortunately, I also think that it is far easier to corrupt as a system and human nature would certainly result in its corruption. This is also part of why I think that anarchy would never work.
TDOM
Yes, well put. Marx's original ideas were brave & original & the injustice of the class system/hereditary kingship should be obvious to all. Like all good ideas, it eventually got turned into a dogma, rather than a set of lenses good for judging a particular part of life.
ReplyDeleteA kind of socialism which was not reductionist & materialist, which recognized the spirit, & left people alone to live their lives without interference from a nanny state... that I could get behind. But of course that doesn't exist. Not yet, anyway.