An individualist takes on postmodern neo-Marxism in Collectivism’s Progress: From Marxism to Race and Gender Warfare

...With the end of the Communist system in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the shift to market-oriented reforms in places like China, it seemed as if only “capitalism” was left standing, embodied in America’s political, economic, and military dominance of the world. The political and cultural progressive left retreated even further than before into the cloistered halls of higher education. They could sulk and lick their ideological wounds while continuing to sit in their intellectual ivory towers chanting incantations that capitalism was evil, communalism was just, and the “oppressed” and “exploited” still needed liberation....

But the 21st century was no longer the “harsh conditions” of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, nor the “bad times” of the Great Depression in the 1930s. America and Western Europe, especially, were highly “middle class” societies with standards of living even for the poorest that were unimaginable for the kings and princes of past times....

So who were the oppressed, the exploited, and the “marginalized,” the “suffering masses” yearning to be freed from the injustice of capitalism? Enter the new variation on the old Marxist theme....

...the traditional socialist class warfare was jettisoned and, in its place, there was offered the new race and gender warfare. The Marxists of old used to insist that the failure of the proletariat to fully understand their exploitation by the capitalist bosses was due to their being indoctrinated with a “false consciousness” that they were “free” under capitalism, while all the time they were “wage slaves” not even knowing the extent to which they were the victims of the unjust social system of private ownership of the means of production.

Now the false consciousness was to believe that racism in Western society, if not eradicated (after all, there will always be some stupid people with foolish ideas), at least was dramatically reduced compared to the past, with attitudes and actions by most people far more consistent with the American ideal of judging and treating others as individuals. All the while, racism, it was asserted, is, in fact, pervading society, keeping “people of color” down for the benefit of those who were “privileged” merely by their “whiteness.”

The same applied to gender and sexual orientation....

...Get people to believe that any experienced disappointment, every personal failure, or any slight by another person (whether actually intended or not) is a demonstration of the pervasive and inescapable existence and practice of racism, gender discrimination, or sexual orientation bigotry, and some people are made into viewing themselves as the inescapable victims of white and male and heterosexual oppression, everywhere and every day.

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