Marxism by Any Other Name

Posted on | January 14, 2013 | 21 Comments

Betty Friedan (left) leads a 1971 protest for the Equal Rights Amendment

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”
— Ronald Reagan, 1987

Understanding feminism requires a critical study of the movement’s history that few people are willing to undertake, which is why the roots and development of “Women’s Liberation” (as the movement called itself in the late 1960s and early ’70s) are so widely misunderstood.

Intellectual inertia, a willingness to accept conventional wisdom without scrutiny, thus serves to foster the deception by which feminists present themselves as speaking on behalf of all women, dishonestly denying their origins and ideological affinity as a movement of the radical Left.

Many people are therefore confused by the occasional exposures of feminism’s true nature, as when Brent Musberger was publicly humiliated for having remarked during a football game that Alabama’s quarterback has a beautiful girlfriend. “How dare he!” screamed the feminists, as if Musberger had actually said someting rude or “sexist.”

Similarly, Joe Scarborough was forced this morning to abase himself on MSNBC for the Thought Crime of arguing with his female co-host:

Let’s be clear about what happened here: Joe Scarborough is a smug, domineering egomaniac. Yet it was not until he displayed those traits in an argument with Mika Brzezinski about the lack of “diversity” in Obama’s cabinet that Scarborough was forced to apologize for his habitual overbearing rudeness. Think about that.

Meanwhile, a reader calls my attention to something Dr. Helen Smith noted last month: One of England’s pioneering feminists, Erin Pizzey, gave an interview to Dean Esmay in which she described how she recognized the Marxist nature of the movement at its inception:

I’ve always tried to tell the truth about the beginnings. I was one of the first people in England to get involved with the Women’s Movement and what I saw there, I knew perfectly well was going to be extremely destructive. And, when I began to stand up at these great big Collective meetings – and interestingly enough there were a lot of women from America who came over with initial instruction to show the British women how to be radical feminists. They’re a pretty frightening crowd and I got screamed at a lot . . .
[Y]ou have to remember my background, my parents were caught by the Communists when I was nine and I didn’t see them for three years . . .
So, I had no love of Communism from the very beginning. From what I saw when I was in these great big collectives was really Marxism. We were all organized into groups in our own homes and told that we must have consciousness-raising sessions. And I remember the woman who came to our consciousness-raising and when she finished, I said this has nothing to do with women, this is actually Marxist. I said so we’re supposed to go to work full time and put our children into care provided by the state — like the Communist government — and why are we calling this liberation?

“Consciousness-raising sessions” — that’s a ’60s flashback that most people nowadays either (a) don’t know anything about, or (b) fail to properly understand as a method of indoctrination borrowed from Mao’s China, to rid people of what Marxists call “false consciousness,” i.e., traditional beliefs that contradict Marxist ideology.

Nowadays, the Left’s ideology (including feminism) so widely permeates our culture that “consciousness-raising” is seldom considered necessary, except perhaps on university campuses where it’s called “freshman orientaton” or “Introduction to Women’s Studies.”

Erin Pizzey has recently published an autobiography, This Way to the Revolution, the liner notes of which declare “her story is . . . vital to any understanding of a more revolutionary age.”

Understanding feminism is apt to have the same effect as Ronald Reagan once observed among those who understood Marx and Lenin.

RECENTLY:

Jan. 11: Shorter Joe Scarborough: ‘Who Do You Think You’re Calling Chauvinistic, Bitch?’
Jan. 9: Leave Brent Musberger Alone!
Jan. 5: ‘Learning French,’ IYKWIMAITYD
Nov. 10: The Slut Paula Broadwell

Category: Feminism, Intellectuals

Comments

21 Responses to “Marxism by Any Other Name”

RMNixonDeceased
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:22 pm

RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Marxism by Any Other Name http://t.co/5qPoMMSC #TCOT
rosalie
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:35 pm

That’s very interesting. That’s why if they’re going to show any support for a woman she’s got to be a Liberal or, better yet, a Marxist. I would like to think that there are good feminists out there too. I wonder if Palin would be considered one?
rmnixondeceased
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:43 pm

Heh. Nobody listens to Betty over here. The dead are all equally dead. No discrimination here. Nobody fetches me sandwiches.
Quartermaster
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:45 pm

There are two types of feminism, Family and radical. Radical feminism is the destructive type that we have come to know and hate. family feminism is the traditional type where a woman places her family first and heaven help the man she’s married to if he does something that is destructive to the Family.
Dworkin, and Friedan are the destructive type. Palin isn’t one of those, but she isn’t quite the traditional type either. Getting involved in polotics hasn’t exactly been a boon to her family, and I would assert that it has had a destructive influence on her family.
Quartermaster
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

I seriously doubt that understanding feminism will have much of an effect. Feminism has been understood for 40 years and look what we have now. When you have a low info electorate who care only for the goodies they can get, there is little hope for such a country or people.
rmnixondeceased
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:48 pm

What I find interesting is that over here, even Karl isn’t a Marxist.
Christy Waters
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:48 pm

It seems to me that part of the task of the conservative movement must involve “deprogramming” the population out of the group-think mentality. Leftists are successful partially because they can get away with sectioning the population into herds, which dehumanizes people and further erodes the principle that we each have rights in spite of the majority. We must restore a respect for the concept of individualism if we have any chance of restoring liberty in the US.
WJJ Hoge
January 14th, 2013 @ 12:49 pm

Let’s take feminism as the thesis and the real world fruits of it as the antithesis.

I suppose the synthesis could be called Dielectical Immaterialism.
Finrod Felagund
January 14th, 2013 @ 1:16 pm

Ever notice that organizations on the Left usually try to conceal their true aims to all but the hardcore, whereas organizations on the Right are open and upfront about their true aims?
Zilla of the Resistance
January 14th, 2013 @ 1:36 pm

I wrote about femmunism 2 years ago, if anyone is interested, it is still in my archives:
http://politizilla.blogspot.com/2010/12/femininican.html
Evi L. Bloggerlady
January 14th, 2013 @ 1:47 pm

That is why Palin bailed out. Read how her and Todd decided on her stepping down as Governor. She is not going to run for President (probably) and I doubt she will run again for any elective office (at least in the near future), but she will stick around and promote issues on her own. Which is better for her family.

So I would argue she realized this was not good for her marriage and children and put them first.

That she is still living in the heads of the left as evidenced at the Golden Globes last night is pretty amazing.
jetty
January 14th, 2013 @ 2:01 pm

Liberals have embarked on the long-term destruction of the traditional family and traditional church. The next battle, in my opinion, will be to mandate public school attendance.
Zilla of the Resistance
January 14th, 2013 @ 2:34 pm

Femmunists are just as ugly now as they were decades ago. What is it with ugly bitches and leftism anyway?
Dielectical Immaterialism | hogewash
January 14th, 2013 @ 2:39 pm

[…] Posted on 14 January, 2013 by wjjhoge Stacy McCain has a post up on the Marxist underpinnings of […]
Adobe_Walls
January 14th, 2013 @ 4:10 pm

Daniel Greenfield had this to say on that very subject.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/01/using-cultural-technology-in-culture-war.html
Rob Crawford
January 14th, 2013 @ 4:17 pm

Ah, but the left will claim that the right really *ISN’T* open and upfront. They assume everyone is like them, thus the “vast right wing conspiracy”.
Becca Lower
January 14th, 2013 @ 5:52 pm

Checkers doesn’t fetch your slippers?
rmnixondeceased
January 14th, 2013 @ 6:44 pm

Not even in life!
Feminist Movement = Marxist Movement | The Lonely Conservative
January 14th, 2013 @ 7:34 pm

[…] the rights of women. Who can be against making women’s lives better, right? The problem is, it was just another vehicle to advance communism.Understanding feminism requires a critical study of the movement’s history that few people are […]
Bob Belvedere
January 15th, 2013 @ 8:37 am

Exactly – they ascribe to the Right the characteristics and thinking that drives them.
Bob Belvedere
January 15th, 2013 @ 8:47 am

I must disagree, QM. There is only one type of Feminism and it is (1) an Ideology and (2) a Leftist one, for it seeks to defy Reality and proclaim, among many other fantastical things, that men and women are equal in all things*.

Women like Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin are not part of this group, although, as with us all, they are (1) flawed [ie: Human Beings] and (2) have been infected with the virus known as Leftist Thinking. What these kind of women represent [what their binders say, if you read them] is the Traditional American Woman in the 21st Century. They have more in common with Abigail Adams and Martha Washington than with their Feminist contemporaries.

Feminism is Left Wing.

_______________________

*The OED defines
it thusly: noun. the
advocacy of women’s rights
on the ground of the equality
of the sexes.