Over the weekend I made a couple of brief tumblr posts on a topic I’ve not touched for a while, but which I think deserve more effort. The red pill community is getting good at opening our eyes to the matrix, as we call it, but have we really? There’s another, more sinister matrix at work, one that is the origin of feminism itself, feminism being what we rail against on a daily basis.
The Challenge
If you do anything over the Thanksgiving weekend, spend the time to watch this free video lecture series. It’s economist Richard Wolff’s 4-part video class, Marxian Economics – An intensive introduction.
The basic assertion Wolff makes is that the capitalist system is the true matrix that we live in. We must not discuss changing it. We can debate anything, except the system itself. Look around you. Do you notice that economists and political commentators all tow the line that capitalism is the best there is, we’re just in a “natural down turn”?
Here’s a relevant quote from one of the sessions,
Technically we need all the different parts. Land, Labor, and Capital. But the technical organization of production is a completely different question from the surplus organization of production. That’s a question of how we relate as people to the technical process of making things: goods, and services. And if we organize our relationships so that we’re at each other’s throats, then Marx reaches the following conclusion: Production, Society, could be organized better than Capitalism has managed to do it.
Look at the reality we’re dealing with now. How can rampant foreclosures, unemployment, debt, and fraud be a product of the best of all possible economic systems?
Wolff further extrapolates (though he doesn’t use this terminology) that feminism was born out of Capitalism. While we rail against feminism, we should turn our attention to the conditions that led to it. As I summarized on my tumblr post,
Feminism exists because Capitalism made it so.
When men’s wages stagnated and then fell, women needed to work to sustain the family. The family structure couldn’t contain the pressures. Feminism points the blame away from the origin of the problem and serves up increasing tension between sexes.
Wolff has degrees from Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. Despite this (a nod to his sense of humor about his credentials) he knows what he’s talking about.
Go into it with an open mind. Watch each class in full, in order. Believe me it is well worth your time. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll be exposed to a point of view that you disagree with. The best thing, depending on how you define best is that you may see the world a little differently. Or a lot differently.
Please leave your reactions to these videos in the comment section below, after you’ve watched and digested them all.
For those interested in reading further I can recommend this book by Richard Wolff.
Two caveats: no attempt at Marxist communism has ended in anything other than a totalitarian state ruled by the fiat of a corrupt Party.
Secondly, the entry of women into the workforce in large numbers depressed wages significantly. Though women were approximately 16 percent of wage laborers since the late 1800s, their labor helped to depress wages in most professions after the 1960s. Additionally, the requirement of many women-only benefits, e.g. maternity leave, further hurt the viability of the single-income household.
Naked capitalism will not lead, in the end, to free-market competition which would be expected to optimize outcomes independent of outside regulation (or interference). However, central planning won’t help much, either, as government tends to attract the ambitiously incompetent. Ideally, the government would intervene to safeguard the welfare of its citizens and their descendants, via as light a corrective touch as possible. I prefer the Pigouvian tax, but that’s just me.
If you’ve watched the Wolff videos you should be able to answer this question quite easily,
Why did those attempts fail?
There are many reasons, but there’s one primary one that Wolff focuses on.